Dogs: Man’s Best Friend? Or a Mail Carrier’s Worst Enemy
Date: March 2nd, 2016
The Biggest Challenge Facing Postal Carriers
Working for the USPS is fun, the money is good and the job is exciting. However, the job is not short of challenges, especially for the people who have to go around and deliver mail to the houses. Today, we decided to focus on postal carriers and one of the biggest challenges that they have been facing for centuries now - dog attack - and from the look of things, the challenge is still here to stay since people will not stop keeping dogs and anyway, the dogs are somehow doing their duty; that of protecting their house.
Mail Carriers and Dogs
For many years now, the relationship between postal carriers and dogs is not something to smile about. For lack of a better word, I would say it has been rocky. Recently, the US postal Service revealed that it can get worse than the public really think and they are looking for ways to solve the problem once and for all. According to their figures that they released sometime back, dogs attack at least 6 thousand postal carriers every year.
Why Dogs Bite Mail Carriers
Have you been asking yourself why dogs would attack mail carriers more often as per the situation? Well, we also went on a mission to because of the same and we consulted dog experts to shed more light on the issue. Here are some of the reasons they gave out.
First, we have two types of dogs that would attack mail carriers:
• Territorial dogs
• Fearful dogs
Territorial dogs hate strangers because they feel they’re invading their territories. For that reason, they would send warnings to anybody who they see as invader. They would bark, growl, lunge or even stare at them. However, mail carriers would keep on coming despite the warnings from these territorial dogs. You see, they are just doing their job of delivering mail, before the owner of the address can call and complain that they have not been getting their mail on time. From the dog’s point of view, mail carriers never stop invading their space. So, when this continues, the warning will escalate to an actual attack and the dog will bite them. In short, mail carriers are unwelcome to these dogs and even if they have not attacked yet, they would bite sooner or later. Then we have the fearful dogs that are always afraid of strangers, especially those who are carrying things. What these dogs need is courage to attack and if they can’t gather the courage, they will wait until the mail carriers have turned their back, which gives them enough confidence to attack by biting. Therefore, frightened dogs and territorial dogs or ones with both issues are the ones that always attack mail carriers. Otherwise, Postal Office Employment does not have as many challenges as compared to other industry sectors.