[Rhetts_mama]

*Number of dog bites that occur in the US each year: 4.5 million, 1:5 of those bites are serious enough to require medical attention.
*Odds of a child being bitten: 3.2:1
*Of the dogs that bite, 77% were owned by the family or a family friend.
*Highest incidence of bites occur in children between the ages of 5-9, with the median age of all dog bites being 15 (boys have the highest rate).
*In children under 4, 47% of the time the attacker was the family dog.
*Children seen in the emergency department were more likely to have been bitten in the face than an older person (77%).

Source: CDC

So, who gets the blame? The mean old dogs, of course. Heaven forbid that we as parents ever admit that our children aren't the angels we make them out to be or that we aren't as vigilant as we claim we are. We aren't about to admit that yelling at a child once to not do something around a dog isn't a "fix" to the problem. Is it the fault of the child? Not really. They truly are missing the portion of the brain that allows them to control their impulses and forsee consequences. Instead we dump the dog at a shelter or pawn it off on someone else so we don't have to work on the real problem. So, who's really to blame? Bet you don't like the answer to that one.