quote:

Before I was a kid person, I was a dog person. When I took my beagle, Lily, for walks, I was never surprised that kids of all ages flocked to her. After all, she was adorable!

What shocked me, though, was how many parents would just stand there as their child ran up to a stranger’s dog and started petting it – or worse, tackled her with a hug – without so much as a quick “Hi, can I pet your dog?”

Lily was a mild-mannered soul who always took the over-enthusiastic petting in stride, and none of those kids were ever in danger of being bitten. But their parents didn’t know that!

A new study shows just how unprepared kids are when it comes to proper doggie manners. A survey of 300 children by researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medicine Center finds that 43 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 15 failed a simple dog-bite-prevention test. This explains why there's 4.5 million dog bites a year in the U.S., and many of the victims are children. (See below for the full test, developed by lead study author Cinnamon Dixon, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.)