Nugget, a therapy dog, helps to rehabilitate juvenile offenders in Tennessee through "ProjectPITS."

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How many faithful dogs served their masters well in Tennessee can never be known. What is known, is that throughout the years many people in Tennessee have relied on dogs to assist in everyday life and to provide companionship.

While dogs continue to serve in many of their traditional functions, dogs have also taken on new and unique tasks that enhance the lives of their owners and the community. Therapy, medical assistance, and search and rescue are only a few of the many services dogs provide to the people of Tennessee.

While serious attacks by dogs are very rare, the intense media coverage that may accompany such an incident can mislead the public and/or lawmakers into imagining that dogs pose a significant threat to the community. Sensationalized publicity, combined with a lack of understanding of the infrequency of dog attacks, and of their causes, has resulted in reactive and uniformed policies directed against certain types of dogs. At least 25 cities or counties in Tennessee have passed breed specific restrictions, or outright bans, in the profoundly mistaken notion that community safety is dependent upon the appearance of the dog, rather than the behavior of the owner.

Today, dogs contribute more to the welfare of individuals and the society than perhaps any other time in the history of the human dog-bond. Additionally, over the past three decades, increased awareness of the importance of humane care and control of dogs, the enactment and enforcement of leash laws, and dog bite prevention education, have all been instrumental in lowering the number of reported dog-related injuries in Tennessee and throughout the nation.

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Why does her behavior, her suffering, and her extreme tolerance towards "mankind" not count?

One of many chained and severely neglected dogs in Memphis. Photo Courtesy: Donna of Hearts of Gold Pit Rescue

www.heartsofgoldpitrescue.com

The dog pictured above is but a sad and terrible reminder of the untold number of abused dogs that suffer at the hands of humans. How many dogs tolerate unimaginable cruelty, yet live and die quietly, unrecognized and unnoticed? Who counts these dogs? Where are the "behavioral studies" on the overwhelming and silent majority of dogs that don't bite.

If we feel it necessary to "study and tally" dog bites, it also becomes necessary to complete the equation by studying dogs that don't bite, especially those dogs that experience extreme neglect and/or cruelty.

Is it fair?–Is it humane?–Is it statistically valid to only count dogs that bite and ignore all the dogs that may have every reason to bite and don't?

***

Off the streets and onto the beat: Dixee finds a home with the Memphis Police Department.

A few months ago, Dixee was a homeless mutt on the streets of Olive Branch, Mississippi. Now she's a working member of the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

For several years, the MPD has adopted rescues such as Dixee to sniff out narcotics with the Organized Crime Unit (OCU) rather than shell out big bucks for German Shepherds from police canine vendors. Of the department's 10 drug dogs, eight are rescues.

"It's cost effective to train rescues," says Keith Watson, who oversees training of the dogs. "Some of the trained police dogs cost $10,000 to $15,000. But I can spend $5 of city-funded gas to drive to a local shelter and pay $30 or get the dog donated to the city of Memphis. Then I can turn that dog into one of those $10,000 dogs."

Dixee, a tan-colored Labrador and hound mix, was picked up by Olive Branch Animal Control and then adopted through Tipton County's Dogs 2nd Chance program. From there, she went to live in 2nd Chance director Linda Sutphin's home as a foster. In May, Sutphin contacted the MPD to suggest that Dixee might make a good police dog.

"Every dog is not born, designed, or has the enthusiasm to be a police dog," Watson says. "So I give the dogs a seven-point test, and a lot more fail than pass. But sometimes you get a dog that passes the test, and you have a pretty good feeling about it. Dixee had that when I first looked at her."

At Sutphin's home, Watson tested Dixee to determine her level of interest in a tennis ball. Police dogs are trained to sniff out drugs when officers place the odor of narcotics on dog toys.

"[Watson] put a tennis ball under a milk crate and then he stood on the crate. Dixee knocked him off to get to that ball," Sutphin says. "He was very impressed with Dixee."

Dixee whizzed through training, where she learned to detect the presence of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. But not every rescue can handle the stress of police training.

"A lot of rescued dogs have been abused, and when it comes to training, there's a high level of pressure," Watson says. "Some dogs can't take that, and they crash."

Once an animal passes training, they are assigned to a handler. Dogs live as pets in the handler's home, and they accompany their handlers on search warrants and drug raids to detect narcotics.

"The dogs often outlast the police officers," Watson says. "A typical narcotics agent doesn't stay in the department more than five or six years due to promotions. A dog can work about 12 to 13 years depending on the diet and exercise that the handler maintains."

Other K-9 unit dogs have come from the Memphis Animal Shelter as well as from shelters in Hernando, Mississippi, and Lauderdale County.

"These dogs go from death row to a life of luxury," Watson says. "They go from almost losing their lives to saving lives, especially when we're able to stop shipments of drugs from going through our city."

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National Canine Research Council

What is a dog bite?

While the question seems simple enough, the answer is often not what we imagine.

Dog bite numbers offer little useful information about canine behavior. Dog bite numbers are simply a tally of the number of people who sought medical treatment and/or reported a break in skin after exposure to a dog's nail or tooth; in other words, the number of people reported to have been injured interacting with a dog, an interaction that may or may not have involved aggression.

If dog bite numbers provide little useful information about canine aggression, then what can Tennessee dog bite numbers really tell us about canine / human interaction?

First, dog bite numbers reveal that there is no "dog bite epidemic" in Tennessee.

During the past three decades, increased awareness of the importance of humane care and control of dogs, the enactment and enforcement of leash laws, and dog bite prevention education, have all been instrumental in lowering the number of reported dog-related injuries in Tennessee and throughout the nation.

While Memphis has not had as large a decrease in the number of reported dog bites as have other U.S. cities, the decrease is still significant given the increase in the human and dog population in Memphis over the past three decades:

Source: Memphis Animal Services

National Canine Research Council

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: