Our next guest is Dr. Jim Crosby, uh, who is an expert in canine aggression and dog bites. Thank you for being here and welcome to The Junction.

Oh, thanks for having me and being here at the forensics conference has been a lot of fun and it's good also to catch up with old friends and new ones.

So can you start by telling us what your background is and how it relates to the field of veterinary forensics?

Sure, I spent an entire career as a police officer out on the street. So, in investigating crimes for 23 years, I was used to looking at things from, through that lens. When I retired and got into first learning about dog training and dog behavior, I became aware of the case in 2001 where Diane Whipple was killed by the dogs out in San Francisco. And that bizarrely fascinated me because it never occurred to me. that dogs would kill a person. We mistreat each other all the time, and we mistreat animals, but dogs killing a person? So I started asking questions, and that led to me getting a lot of training in specifically dog behavior, but animal behavior in general. Uh, and eventually coming here to the University of Florida and getting a master's degree in veterinary forensics, and then following that up and getting a PhD. And those studies for both my master's and my doctorate have been focused on dog aggression, dog bites, and most particularly fatal dog attacks on human beings.

So what is the importance of investigating dog bites, especially when they lead to fatalities?

It's very, very important to adequately investigate and not make assumptions because unless we really know and understand what's going on and what has led to this, there's no way for us to prevent or reduce the incidences in the future. Yes, it's a rare occasion. The odds of being killed in the United States by a dog attack are about 1 in 15 million. But, for those 30 or 40 people a year, for their families, if we can do something that's effective to reduce the likelihood of even a few of those, then that's going to make a big difference in somebody's life. If it's just simply bites again. The public, the owners, the dogs themselves are placed in danger. If we understand what leads to inappropriate and uncontrolled use of their teeth, whether it's against each other or humans, we can improve the quality of life for the owners, the non dog owning public, and the dogs themselves.

I think that social media and television and news and all that stuff has given the public an idea of what a killer dog looks like or is, right? And I work with a lot of animals. I do high volume sterilization and wellness. So I see tons of dogs coming and going and my perception is that of what an aggressive dog is, is very different because most of the, you know, what people would say, the pit types and such tend to be nicer to us than like the really little dogs and some other breeds. So if somebody asks you what a killer dog looks like, what is, what, what does that look like to you?

It winds up being a situation where you can't really tell by looking at the appearance of a dog, what it's going to do. As I mentioned in the lecture, the research has shown that even dog professionals have a difficult time with mixed breeds telling what the predominant breed is, or what the mix of breeds might be. The research also says that individuals within breeds have more variation in behavior than they do between breeds. So What does a killer dog look like? Well, it has four legs, and it may be big like a Great Dane. It may be as small as a Pomeranian, because both types of dogs have killed human beings. What we need to learn, instead of trying to figure out what a dog looks like that's a killer, is to learn what a dog is communicating when it's speaking to us. and learn to listen when the dogs are telling us they're uncomfortable, or they're afraid, or they're unsure, or any of the reasons that a dog finds it necessary to use their teeth.

Last year was the first time that I actually learned about the Dunbar Bite Scale. So, can you tell us what that means and how it's used to assess dog bites?

Yeah, it's a six level scale. that Dr. Ian Dunbar developed back in the late 70s as a guide to assessing the severity of dog bites in a quantifiable way beyond Ooh, that's bad. Oh, that's not so bad. Ooh, that's the worst I've ever seen. I hear that far too often from various parties, and it's, to me, it's, Well, if that's the worst you've ever seen, I'm really unimpressed. Let me show you some pictures. But, um, what the scale does is let us quantify to a certain degree the engagement of the dog and the circumstances and develop a relative level of severity. A level one is just intimidation behavior. There's no physical contact with a level one. The dog growls, barks. communicates in an or, in, in a, uh, purpose usually to gain space. Level 2 is may, may be contact, but it's with a closed mouth, a muzzle punch basically. Uh, a dog shoving you back, trying to raise its voice, saying, Hey, I'm uncomfortable here. Level 3 is where you first get a very, inhibited and controlled contact with human skin. It's one to four holes and they're shallow holes because, and it's one to four because the canine teeth are usually about twice as long as the incisors between them. So a limited bite. in relationship to the dog and the size of their teeth, will only engage part of the canine teeth. Level four is where you've got a dog that has reached out and grabbed on and sunk most, if not all of its teeth into the target. And that's where you find shaking and pulling and, and dragging around a level five is multiple level fours. You know, this, that's a dog that's basically chainsaw with teeth. And a level six is a human fatality. Yeah, that's kind of specieist of us to consider that no matter how serious it was, if it kills us, it's the worst of the worst. But that's those the criteria that were set up. It's a good basic reference scale to relatively understand how how serious an incident was. If, for instance, out of our audience, if one out of animal control officer here has a dog in his jurisdiction that has bitten somebody, and then they move to another jurisdiction and they have an incident, the second animal control officer can conceivably call the first one and say, Hey, what's the history on this dog? And rather than saying, Oh yeah, it was a bite, but it was no big deal, the first one can say, Hey, this was a level four bite. And the second officer will understand, Okay, this dog has a history of substantially uncontrolled biting. And that helps communicate concerns much more clearly.

Does animal behavior, in your experience, have anything to do with the severity of a bite?

Oh yes, it's, behavior is, um, is very, very central to it. For instance, if you have a fearful dog, that is backed up in a corner. That's why we need to teach better body language skills, because that dog doesn't need a hug. And if you run over, or a child runs over, and grabs it around the neck to make it feel better, it's gonna bite you. Why? Well, it's tried to tell you it's uncomfortable, and you just weren't listening. Or maybe you just didn't understand. Um, behavior is related to the severity of bites. Um, dogs that have are well socialized and have learned, um, limits within their lives, either from conspecifics or from littermates or from their parents. Um, they tend to have much more stable temperaments and when they feel or perceive that it's necessary to bite, they tend to show a much more controlled engagement. So, so the behavior, yeah, the, the, Regular behavior of a dog can tell us a whole lot about what they're likely to do if they're poked and prodded to whatever their threshold of engagement is.

Yeah, I know that there have been bites that have occurred because people have put their hands into a dog's cage or, you know, approached an animal or try to separate animals and then that results in, in dog bites. So, it, the dog often gets blamed for the action of the bite, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the dog initiated the, the sequence of events, right, that led to that bite.

Right. Yeah. What I If you've ever traveled through the UK, you know there's a voice that comes up in the tube, the subway, that says, mind the gap, mind the gap. I've adopted that in dog bites. One of the first things I want to know is when the dog chose to bite, did the dog close the gap to the person or did the person close the gap to the dog. If I have a case where a dog has chased a child down the street after jumping over two fences and digging under, uh, uh, something else, and then grabs the child, and closes the gap and and expends all of that energy to bite. That's way different from a dog that is in real case sitting minding its own business and a stranger came up and despite the strength, the owner's warnings and attempt to keep the stranger away. Pushes past the owner, leans over, grabs the dog by the cheeks, and tries to kiss it on the nose, saying, Dude, I'm like a dog whisperer. Yes, he lost a significant portion of his nose. Had it coming.

Right.

Different bite.

Who is more likely, uh, statistically to get attacked or be a fatality of a dog bite?

The numbers have been hard to nail down. It seems that for instance, with children below the age of 10, little boys are very significantly more likely to have been fatally wounded by a dog than little girls. Uh, when we come to adults, the most common victim to date has been a woman in her thirties on her own property, uh, with dogs that she's either owning or cared caring for, uh, in the Southeastern U S in a upper middle class neighborhood where the gross annual income is above 100, 000 a year. So not the bad neighborhood problem we thought it was.

Should all animals that have bites that are like level 5 or level 6 bites, should all of them be considered dangerous animals or not and why?

By the time we get to the level 5s and the human fatalities, for the fatalities for instance, pretty much all state law requires that any dog that kills a human being be destroyed period. Uh, it's at very least declared dangerous, but I can't think of a state that doesn't require the destruction. Level five dogs. Those are dangerous dogs. Those are animals that have not only shown that with a single bite, they have little to no bite inhibition, but have inflicted repeated bites at that level and caused significant damage every time they have bitten. So those are dogs that I don't have a problem with, with declaring a level 5 biting dog as being dangerous. And they meet the standard in most states for being declared dangerous. I believe, uh, Indiana still doesn't have a dangerous dog law, but the rest of the country does.

When a dog attacks and hurts somebody or kills somebody, who is ultimately responsible for, for that fatality?

Most often it falls to the owner or caretaker of the dog. Typically, they have either done something or failed to do something that addressed the behavior issues that accompanied the bite before it got to that level. Sure, people say all the time, well, it came out of nowhere. If you dig in, no, they don't come out of nowhere. You may not know the history, for instance, if it's a stray you've taken in. But, typically, to get to that severe an incident, there have been plenty of warning signs and usually lower level precursor behaviors before they go off to the point that it results in a death. Unless it's what I call an accidental, which as I explained before, dog bites you and you accidentally get an infection from a very small bite and your body can't fight off the infection and you die, that's not something the dog could foresee.

If there are any, any listeners that are animal control officers or investigators that want to obtain more information on this subject, how can they get more resources or how can they get a hold of you?

The easiest way to contact me is, uh, my email, which is the words CanineAggression. and that's spelled out C A N I N E, not the letter and number, but Canine Aggression at Gmail. They can also contact me at jcrosby@FAS.harvard.edu. Uh, that's the new Canine Aggression Project we have through the Brain Lab at Harvard. Um, they can just simply Google Jim Crosby Dog and I come right up. Um, they can also look, there's, Uh, a book out, it's called Dog Bites, a Multidisciplinary Perspective, edited by Dr. Daniel Mills and Dr. Kerry Westgarth over in the UK. There are a number of articles within that book about dog bites and dog aggression. I wrote two of the chapters, one on investigation and one on the, uh, um, physical morphology of bites. So, there are, there are, uh, resources out there. And if somebody's really interested in veterinary forensics overall, there's a program right here at the University of Florida that I've been through all the way as far as it goes. And, uh, yeah, it's a, it's a great program. And, uh, even people who may think they've got a lot of knowledge about the whole subject can learn an awful lot from this group.

Yes, I actually, I did the Forensics Master's, Veterinary Forensics Master's, so I tell anybody that's very interested in the field of Veterinary Forensics that it's worthwhile because you, you don't know what you don't know until you get through something like that.

Exactly, and I completed the same Master's, um, and then went and completed it as a PhD, so, through the vet school, so, yeah, it's a, it's very valuable information. And it puts a lot of us in touch.

Yes, right? That's what I really enjoy about this conference and conferences like this. It's all the contacts and the people that you meet. Because, again, you don't know what resources that are out there. And then you come to a place like this and then you meet people and it's like, Oh, I didn't know that existed.

And

you, if anything, have another resource.

Yeah, and it's always great to be able to call up somebody you actually know and say, Hey, listen, I need some advice on this. And, you know, I'm always, I'm always glad to hear from others, uh, when they run across something they haven't seen, you know. I may not know it, but maybe I know who does.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much for giving us your time and sharing your knowledge. And thank you for everything that you're doing for animals.

Well, thank you and, uh, best wishes to you and to the podcast and to all your listeners out there.

Thank you so much.