Bite Investigations Continue to Rise

The Animal Shelter Advisory Committee met today and shared statistics for the first two months of 2025.  Bite investigations are included on a slide relative to Animal Control cases (not in the background packet).  I went back to the January 2025 video and added statistics for the last three months of 2024.  Animal Control Officer Floyd Bias was attacked by dogs in early November of last year and recently returned to work.

Animal to Human bites rose significantly last fiscal year.  

The number of bites since the 2024 fiscal year end is 180 (over a five month period) or 36 bites per month.  Annualized that number would be 432 and would be off the chart pictured above.

Public safety has been a concern in other communities that have shut off shelter intake under Best Friends Animal Society & American Pets Alive policies.  "Let them roam unaltered" has been the result from implementing BFAS and APA practices.  

Last month San Angelo City Manager Daniel Valenzuela reversed shelter "shut off" in the interest of public safety.

Hopefully, efforts can be undertaken to reduce the number of horrific dog attacks experienced by the city's most vulnerable.  

Shelter Chief Morgan Chegwidden informed the ASAC that 76% of dog to human bites result from unaltered male dogs.  

That seems like a good place to start.

Update:  Morgan said "88% of pets coming into the shelter are unaltered."  Managed intake of owned and unowned pets started in 2019.   Six years of BFAS and APA, neither of which prioritize spay/neuter, drove "let them unaltered", which turned San Angelo city streets into third world levels of loose dogs.  A better statistic to share is how many pets leave the shelter fixed, spayed-neutered. 

ASAC committee members asked about the status of shelter renovations/updates and the projected use of the temporary facility.  Funds were received in April 2023 to pay for shelter updates but the project is yet to be bid.

Near the end of the meeting Morgan said that "most bite investigations are animal to animal."  That means the last five months of data has a wider scope than the animal to human bite information in the graph.  The two are not directly comparable.

It can be a challenge monitoring a measure given staff's history of changing the measure's definition/calculation or shifting presentation content over time.  The good news is the city has the data and a strong public communications department.  It can publish results in picture format at any time for the public to view.