In this episode, we’re spotlighting the United States Postal Service’s annual Dog Bite Awareness campaign. With over 5,800 postal employees attacked by dogs in the past year, this campaign is crucial for the safety of our mail carriers. Special guest Linda DeCarlo, Senior Director of Occupational Safety and Health, discusses the history and importance of the campaign, employee training, and how dog owners can help prevent attacks.
This week on Mailin' It, we’re joined by Linda DeCarlo, Senior Director of Occupational Safety and Health, to discuss the critical issue of dog attacks on postal workers and the Postal Service’s 2024 Dog Bite Awareness campaign. We explore innovative strategies designed to protect mail carriers, including mobile delivery devices that alert them to potentially dangerous canines at specific addresses. Plus, we detail the steps dog owners can take to ensure smooth and safe mail delivery. Tune in to learn how the Postal Service and the community can work together to reduce dog-related incidents and create a safer working environment.
Karla Kirby:
Hello and welcome to Mailin’ It, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm Karla Kirby.
Jonathan Castillo:
And I'm Jonathan Castillo. This episode, we're putting the spotlight on the Postal Services annual dog bite awareness campaign. Last year alone, more than 5,800 postal employees were attacked by dogs while delivering mail in 2021. Another 5,400 employees were attacked.
Karla Kirby:
This year, we're hosting our National Dog Bite Awareness campaign the week of June 2nd. It's an important part of our employee safety training and a great way to help educate our customers on the role that they play in preventing these attacks. To learn more about that, we're joined by Linda DeCarlo. Linda is Senior Director for Occupational Safety and Health at the Postal Service. Linda, welcome back to Mailin’ It.
Linda DeCarlo:
Thank you, Karla. Thank you Jonathan. It's a pleasure to be here.
Karla Kirby:
I think the best place to start is at the beginning, what is National Dog Bite Awareness and why do we do it every year?
Linda DeCarlo:
Wow, that's a big question. Karla Dog Bite Awareness Week dates all the way back to 1980. It started as a result of two particularly brutal dog attacks that we suffered in California, one of which actually resulted in the death of an employee. So it brought really brought to our attention the need to really bring some focus on how to make sure our carriers are safe by both engaging our customers and by training our carriers. It is a collaboration between our customers and our employees. It takes both of us. That's why this year's theme is “don't bite the hand that serves you.” It's about working together, which means postal employees and dog owners are both making an effort to address the problem. We are gonna be kicking off our event in the Philadelphia area. We'll be holding it at one of our new sorting and delivery centers, which is also exciting to be able to present that to the public. Through our press and media relations, we're really looking for engaging our customers and having them play a role, a campaign that's gone on for 24 years where we still see increases, really needs to get more and more focus and attention.
Jonathan Castillo:
I couldn't agree more, Linda. And you know, you mentioned that this is a really a collaboration between the Postal Service and its customers. Right. Can you walk us through how USPS prepares its letter carriers to successfully handle dog encounters while they're out on their routes?
Linda DeCarlo:
I most certainly can. We start from the very first day a carrier starts with us as part of their orientation, we give them some training on dog bite awareness. It's a lot of steps. It's not only just, you know how to use your satchel to put a barrier between yourself and the dog. It's familiarizing them with the dog repellent spray that we have for them to use. We also teach them about not wearing earbuds while out on the route. We wanna make sure that they're always aware of their surroundings. And then after orientation, every year, in addition to the campaign, we have regular standup talks and that's an opportunity for our local leadership to really focus on the kind of dog events they're seeing in their local area. It's one thing to look at data from a national perspective and say 5,800, but 5,800 all resulted in different scenarios. And it's those scenarios that we need our local leadership to step up and make sure that they're training their employees on how to respond.
Jonathan Castillo:
One of the things that I remember when I first came into the Postal Service was they kept telling us this over and over, dog attacks are 100% preventable.
Linda DeCarlo:
It is when we're all working together. We really count on our customers to make sure that their dogs are on leashes behind fences, that they're in another room behind a closed door, that they're not letting kids take mail from our employees. If we get that engagement from our customers aligned with the training we give our carriers, we can prevent it. Now, keep in mind that the satchel and the spray are not really designed to stop the attack. They're designed to really give you that minute to focus on what you need to do to get away. You know, the dog's gonna keep coming, but I'd rather he chewed on the mailbag than on my arm.
Karla Kirby:
So it's interesting you mentioned the satchel as a barrier. Can you tell us a little bit more about the spray? Is it a pepper spray or what type of spray are our carriers using?
Linda DeCarlo:
Yeah, our dog repellent spray does have portions of pepper spray. It's got capsaicin, which is that main ingredient in pepper spray that we're used to using, you know, people to people, but it's not harmful to the dogs. We've had it tested through the Humane Society, the Veterinaries administration, and we've made sure that it's just enough, again, to give us that time to get to safety. It doesn't harm the dog. You know, you hear a lot about different things that we use to repel dogs, you know, people have air horns, people have dog sprays, they have all different things, but it's the same as with humans. Eventually dogs get used to these things, you know, just think about how many times a car alarm goes off in front of your house and you don't even get up to look anymore. It doesn't have that same effect it did when they first came out. So a dog that continuously gets sprayed is going to get used to it and then we'll have to find another method and that's when we have to start engaging some other of our tools to ensure that our employees go home safe every day.
Karla Kirby:
Great point. So given that the Postal Service covers the entire United States, I can imagine there are some big differences in mail routes depending on where you're located. What are some of the factors you have to take into consideration when local training is done?
Linda DeCarlo:
You really have to look at what situations those particular carriers face in their route. Some deliver to apartment complexes where they park their car once they go in a building, they go floor to floor or they're just in a lobby. Others have only street curbside delivery where they're just sticking their arm out a window and only occasionally getting out to go deliver a package to the door. Then you have other routes like rural routes that are delivering on farms where farm dogs are just wandering, they're doing what they're supposed to do. And then you have situations where in some inner cities we're starting to see a feral dog population. You know, people have moved out, they've left their dogs and their dogs are just running the streets and they're just kind of strays hanging out. That's a whole different kind of scenario, and that's the kind of stuff that we really rely on our carriers and our local leaders to really address for themselves.
Jonathan Castillo:
I know you had touched on it a little bit before, you had mentioned that it's really important for postal workers to have that situational awareness. Can you list some of the things that we kind of encourage our employees to do while they're out there on those routes?
Linda DeCarlo:
Absolutely. You know, when we're out on the route, there's a lot of things that we need to be aware of. You know, not only just traffic, other cars coming, people and dogs. So you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times. So we really do tell folks not to wear headphones. Don't be reading through the mail as you're walking. You've all seen people trying to cross the street reading their cell phones. That's not something we want our carriers to do. They need to have their head on a swivel to be alert for whatever situation may come by. And that even includes just keeping your eyes moving. So you avoid tripping over sidewalks, you know, and seeing the dog coming at you from a block away. Those are the things that we really encourage our carriers to do is pay attention.
Jonathan Castillo:
The mobile delivery devices that letter carriers have with them are also an important tool for helping them avoid trouble. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Linda DeCarlo:
Absolutely. One of the great features of the mobile delivery device is a hazard report. And that hazard report includes a number of things, you know, broken sidewalks, broken stairs, bushes that are blocking intersections, but it also has an alert for a dog on the premises. And it doesn't mean that it's a dangerous dog or it's a mean dog. It just means, hey, fluffy lives over here on 13 Main Street. They are allowed to even add in comments such as, you know, fluffy likes to hide under the car and when she sees somebody come out, she likes to play and jump out and bite at your ankles. So this is the kind of message that gets put on the mobile delivery device, and as the carrier is approaching that residence, they get that alert and they get to see, okay, fluffy might be under the car today, so let me just pay extra attention and weave my way around.
What's great about it is that not every day do you get your mail delivered by the same person. So by having the alert in the tool itself in the delivery device allows whoever's carrying that route to get that same notification. So it really helps anybody who's not familiar with the street, not familiar with the houses, to just have a heads up that, Hey, there's a dog that lives over here. So keep an eye out, make sure he is behind the fence, make sure the gate's not open. Rattle your keys as you approach so that you don't scare the dog who's sleeping on the porch. All those kind of things are built into that alert. There's another high tech method that our customers can use to help keep our employees safe, and that's the informed delivery. This allows a customer to get a notification telling them that they may have a package being delivered today.
This gives them an opportunity to say, okay, I'm going out to go run to the grocery store. Let me make sure that the dog's behind another door or that the kids don't have him out because I'm expecting somebody to come up to the porch that day. On the low tech end, we got all sorts of things, you know, we've got the satchel, we've got the spray, we've got the training that we give. One of the things that some people think should be a tool that we use is dog treats. And let me tell you why that's not a good idea. You happen to be delivering the route today, Jonathan, and you've got a doggy bone. So my dog is really happy with you. Karla collects the route tomorrow and she doesn't know about your little affair with that puppy and the dog bones that you bring.
She doesn't have any. Now we've made the dog angry. So we don't wanna set up those situations where we're not even protecting each other, let alone ourselves. So again, we just wanna make sure that we're paying attention. When you go to the door to deliver, put your foot up against a storm door. You'd be shocked at how many times a dog can push open a storm door. One of my employees has a dog and he just learned how to open the storm door from the handle. He figured out that if he put his paw up on it, he could push his face forward and open the storm door. So you wanna make sure that you're doing some of those simple things like put your foot up. We also don't want our carriers to give mail to kids. You know, the dog's doing what he's supposed to do, he is protecting his family and here we are walking up to a kid that he thinks is his best friend and he's gonna make sure that he or she is safe. So it's those kind of low tech learnings that we try to instill in all our carriers.
Jonathan Castillo:
Do we still, by the way, do the dog warning cards when you case in the mail? Is that still something we do?
Linda DeCarlo:
Yeah, we do have the dog warning cards and that's what we use to build the messages in the mobile delivery device. So it gives a carrier an opportunity to put it in their case with their mail and so that they have their own internal alert that reminds them that today I am carrying Route three and there's 16 dogs on this route, so let me make sure I'm really on a swivel.
Jonathan Castillo:
There's a bunch of different touch points there to make sure they're, they're aware.
Linda DeCarlo:
Absolutely.
Karla Kirby:
Great. It seems like we're collecting a lot of information, which is great for the carriers and for our customers. So does the Postal Service also keep track of which cities have the biggest dog problems or dog attacks and which are the safest cities?
Linda DeCarlo:
Yes and no. We do collect data on where we have experienced dog attacks and let me be clear that not all of them are bites. Some of them are, you know, they run after you and you trip and you fall and hurt yourself. So when we talk about dog attacks, we're talking about any kind of incident that involves a dog and we do track that by cities. It's a little harder to say the safest cities because there's a lot of cities out there and we have quite a few that have not experienced any. So it's really exciting that we wanna see those zeros continued to amount. But right now for FY 23, our top cities for dog bites and dog attacks are Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, St. Louis and Cleveland. They've all continued to see increased rises in dog attacks and those are some of the places that we have previously focused some of our kickoff events. But Pennsylvania, the state that we're going to for this year's kickoff event is also starting to see an increase and we wanna make sure they don't make it to the top five for next year.
Jonathan Castillo:
In keeping with the working together theme, let's talk about the other side of the equation, right? In addition to training our letter carriers to avoid and if necessary, defend themselves against dogs on their routes, it's just as important to communicate with dog owners about their responsibilities. This actually seems like it could be a somewhat delicate situation given that some people get dogs specifically to protect their property and don't necessarily see them as a threat to anyone. How do postal employees navigate those tricky situations?
Linda DeCarlo:
You know, it's really about responsible pet ownership. There's dog trainers and we usually engage them in our kickoff events, but it really is about making sure that anybody who comes to your home is safe to do so. Letter carriers are not the only ones knocking on your door. So as a pet owner, you wanna make sure that you're doing everything that you can to ensure that they can continue. A big part of it is really just about that awareness. Where is the dog? You know, when a package is coming, so make sure he is somewhere else, put 'em on a leash, you know, it's okay for you to bring them, you know, to the front door to see the carrier come up to you, but just make sure that you've got full control over it and we gotta not assume that your dog's not gonna bite. I can't tell you how many times, don't worry, my dog doesn't bite. It's okay to pet him, I'm sorry, but if he has teeth he can bite just like your 2-year-old
Jonathan Castillo:
Let me ask you this. Do postal employees have the right to be assertive if homeowner's dog is interfering with the delivery at all?
Linda DeCarlo:
Oh, absolutely. And I, I, I don't know about the word assertive, I think that has a negative connotation. But if you're talking about are there steps that carriers can do when they feel unsafe delivering the mail to your house, absolutely the first step is gonna be a letter to you as a homeowner from the postmaster advising you that, Hey, your dog's kind of a menace. Can you do something about this? 'cause If it continues, we're gonna have to take more drastic steps. If it does continue, there is every possibility that we will not deliver to your house and you'd have to go directly to the post office to pick up your mail every day. And let me add to that too, if you really wanna be the favorite in your neighborhood, if your dog happens to be one of those ones that runs rampant through the city, you can actually cause mail delivery to be stopped for all of your neighbors. So it really does behoove you to be a responsible pet owner.
Karla Kirby:
Oh yeah, completely agree with that.
Linda DeCarlo:
You can't blame them. The dog is protecting his family. You know, we call him man's best friend for a reason because they are parts of our family and their job is to be territorial. That's their house, that's their porch, that's their family. So we have to understand that the way they respond to you as their owner or as part of their family is gonna be different than somebody they may potentially see as a threat. And keep in mind, you know, our carriers are coming to a house during a daytime when there's really not an expectation from the dog that anybody's gonna be home. They're used to you leaving in the morning at 7:00 AM and coming back again at 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM that knock on the door at two o'clock is shocking to their system. So as an owner, you need to understand that your dog is gonna react differently. One of the great things that we've got as part of our kickoff next Thursday is that we will have an animal trainer that is gonna help customers understand the signs and the warning signals of their own pet. You know, are their ears in a different position? Is their tail a different way? Do they have their hackles up? Because some owners don't know what their dog's reaction may be to other people until they start to learn those skills.
Jonathan Castillo:
You're absolutely right. I think the education part of it, you know, not only from our side with the Postal Service, but also the homeowner or the pet owner side. Very important information. Let me ask you this. I know that you had said a little bit earlier some of the things that the Postal Service or the letter carriers can do if there's, you know, this continued threat by the dog. What are some of the other things that can happen to the owner if they continue to not take responsibility or they're, they're not preventing the dog from being a threat to the letter carry anything else?
Linda DeCarlo:
There is a responsibility as a pet owner to ensure that anybody coming to your house is safe. I talked about broken stairs and sidewalks. If somebody falls, doesn't that go to your homeowner's insurance? The same thing applies to a dog bite. Now on the Postal Service side, we're federal employees and are covered under the Federal Employees Compensation Act. And that provides for medical expenses and wage loss. So if your dog bites somebody and that person has to go get stitches, has to be outta work for three weeks, may have to come back to some sort of modified duty for a while, because it is stressful, those expenses can be billed back to you. So we will take care of our employees through the Federal Employees Compensation Act.
Karla Kirby:
Good to know. So what is the Postal Services procedure for communicating with dog owners when there's a problem or even a potential problem?
Linda DeCarlo:
You know, it starts first with the carrier. You know, the carrier has a relationship with the homeowners and there's an obligation for them to just have a conversation. Nobody wants to escalate things more than they have to be, but we do have to ensure our safety beyond that, we start with warning letters. The warning letters, again, give you an opportunity to get your animal under control or away from the mailbox. You know, it's only a matter of moving them to another section of the backyard. But then it goes to where we do advise you that we are no longer going to collect and deliver your mail, and you have to come to the post office until such time as you can prove to us that it is safe for us to reappear at your doorstep.
Jonathan Castillo:
I know that we've covered some of this already, but for any dog owners that might be listening to this episode, right, can you give us some tips that can possibly lower the chances of their dog or fur baby, if you will, attacking a postal employee?
Linda DeCarlo:
Absolutely. Really the basic is keep your dog inside and keep them away from the front door whenever possible. Put them in another room. You know, we've got these tools so that you know we're coming. We have a generally consistent delivery time. So, you know, when you really expect your carrier to come and deliver your mail when there's deliveries at the front door, just make sure that the dog is somewhere they can't get to us through like a storm door or a screen window. Especially now that it's becoming summertime. A lot of the dogs are outside in the yards and we want them to be there. We just don't need them tied up directly under the mailbox. Just use some common sense on what you do to keep your dog restrained, at least at those times when you know that you're expecting somebody and sign up for informed delivery, get that heads up.
I love it because then I know when I need to go pick up my mail when there's something there that I really, really want or I've been really, really waiting for. It gives me that heads up and I get all excited about what's coming. And then the last key is, please don't let your kids take mail from the mailman. They love their letter carriers, they've got relationships. You know, we, we share uniforms and we, we have little cars and toys, but there's something about when a child is with a dog and that child is taking the mail from the letter carrier in the vision of that dog, that it becomes a whole different scenario. So just explain that the letter carriers like kids, but they really wanna stay as far away from that dog as they can.
Karla Kirby:
And one more time for our listeners. We kick off Dog Bite Awareness week June 2nd. And again, Linda, can you tell us where that will be happening?
Linda DeCarlo:
Sure. National Dog Bite Awareness Week runs from June 2nd to June 9th. We will be holding a kickoff press event in Pennsylvania, and during that event, we will have some speakers, we'll have some district leadership. We will have a member of our union partners through a safety task force. We'll have a carrier who actually experienced the bite, and then we'll have a couple of dog trainers. And so it's a really interactive event open to the press, open to customers, anybody that wants to come, just go to hashtag Dog Bite awareness and you'll find all the information on the event and all of the other materials that we have available. Even things like coloring book pages for your kids.
Jonathan Castillo:
Wow, that sounds like an amazing event. I can't wait for it. Linda, thank you so much for being on our podcast today. I mean, it was great speaking with you. A lot of great information. Enjoyed having you.
Karla Kirby:
Absolutely welcome back. It's always a pleasure to have you and providing great information about this year's Dog Bite Awareness campaign.
Linda DeCarlo:
Thank you. My pleasure.
Karla Kirby:
Let's wrap up this week's episode with our Did You Know segment where we share interesting facts about the Postal Service. Today's topic is unconventional delivery methods. I'll get things going. Jonathan, did you know that the largest shipment ever moved through the mail was a bank?
Jonathan Castillo:
Mm. I'm just trying to think through the logistics of that.
Karla Kirby:
Exactly. This is not your average shipment. The bank was transported brick by brick. I'll explain. In 1916, a man by the name of W.H. Coltharp was tasked with building the Bank of Vernal in Vernal, Utah. Colt Harp was a director for the bank and he wanted to get bricks for the facade from a producer in Salt Lake City about 125 miles away. Now, he could have had them shipped by wagon freight, but that would've been quadruple the cost of the bricks themselves. Coltharp realized it would be much cheaper to receive the bricks via parcel. And so we did with 50 pound packages moving through the mail a ton at a time.
Jonathan Castillo:
I can't imagine the postal workers were too happy about that.
Karla Kirby:
Everyone from Salt Lake City to Vernal was in awe as the bricks took over the parcel system. Eventually word got back to the postmaster general who amended the legislation to prevent shipments totaling more than 200 pounds, but not before. Coltharp had nearly 37 tons of bricks delivered.
Jonathan Castillo:
Wow, 37 tons of bricks. Well, Karla, it's my turn to share a peculiar postal delivery method. And this one wouldn't have worked so well for the bank. Did you know that a carrier pigeon service once ran between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island?
Karla Kirby:
Well, just when you think you've heard it all…
Jonathan Castillo:
I know, lemme set the stage. It's 1894 and people are using telegraphs to communicate over large distances, but there's no telegraph line connecting the 50 mile distance between LA and Santa Catalina Island. Enter the Zahn brothers who were homing pigeon experts from LA. They advertised flights as fast as 50 minutes to the mainland, carrying private messages, emergency requests for doctors and Island news. The notes were written on tiny pieces of paper folded into strips and then secured around the pigeon's legs.
Karla Kirby:
So Jonathan, what was the going rate for these avian all stars?
Jonathan Castillo:
It depended on the season and time of day, but they ran Californians anywhere from 50 cents to $1. At one point the rate was determined by the number of words and later by the size of the paper on which the note was written.
Karla Kirby:
Interesting. So basically you could send a message via carry a pigeon for the cost of a stamp today.
Jonathan Castillo:
Exactly. The Zahn brothers ran the business until they sold it in 1898. In 1902, the Telegraph finally came to Santa Catalina Island and rendered the pigeons obsolete.
Karla Kirby:
I'll think of those heroic pigeons the next time I send a text.
Jonathan Castillo:
There was so much great information today, Karla, from learning about all the prevention training our letter carriers go through to the proactive community outreach the Postal Service does to help inform and educate the public. Hopefully there'll be a day when we see those annual dog bite stats go down to zero.
Karla Kirby:
Agreed. You know, as a dog owner, two large dogs