I’m Kelly Voigt. In 1999, when I was seven years old, I was seriously injured when a neighbor’s dog attacked me as I walked near my home. I received approximately 100 stitches in my face and throat and later required treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Sadly, what happened to me is not uncommon, as almost half of all children in the United States will be bitten by a dog by the age of 12. Armed with this information, one year after I was attacked I began teaching other children how to stay safe around dogs. My dog safety presentations became so popular that five years after my attack, a nonprofit organization was formed.
Prevent The Bite was officially formed in 2004, but I have been giving safety presentations to thousands of children since April of 2000. With the help of cofounder Nancy Skeffington, a school psychologist and animal assisted therapist, Prevent The Bite (PTB) has proven itself as a unique educational experience for children. Children in many communities across the country have benefited from my program. I give a safety presentation that informs and entertains, and is presented in a way that allows children of all ages to retain the information and use it when necessary, as testimony has proven. Pretests, posttests and follow up data help to determine the effectiveness of the presentations.
Our mission is to prevent dog bites to children through education. We aim to accomplish this by: Teaching children the basics of canine body language; teaching children safety strategies when interacting with dogs; teaching children the principles of responsible dog ownership. Dog bites are one of the top ten causes of injury to children. There are more hospital emergency room visits every year due to dog bites than from skateboard, in-line skating, baby walker, all-terrain vehicle, and horse-back riding accidents combined. Incredibly, little if anything has been done in most communities to address this problem, although several major studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have concluded that an educational program for children would be a critical factor in reducing the number of dog bites in our country.
Our organization is a cosponsor for National Dog Bite Prevention Week with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the U.S. Postal Service, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and more. I was the spokesperson for National Dog Bite Prevention Week in Washington D.C. in May of 2004. Every year since 2004 information created by PTB has been sent to all 37,000 post offices in the U.S. In 2006 our safety information was distributed to over 60,000 members of the AAP.
Nationally recognized appearances have helped PTB raise awareness of this serious problem to a new level. Our goal is to have a PTB program available to all young children, similar to Stranger Danger and Stop, Drop and Roll. People from Alaska to Africa have expressed an interest in becoming involved in our program. As with all nonprofit organizations, financial support is necessary. An executive with the American Academy of Pediatrics is so eager to help us continue our efforts that he has offered to fly out to speak with sponsors if it would help us to get the funding we need. This speaks not only to the validity of our program, but to the seriousness of the problem of dog bites to children.
Nearly five million people are bitten by a dog every year in the United States. Most of those are children, and most children’s bites are in the face, neck and head. I know the trauma this can cause to children not only physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. I am doing my best to end what some experts call this “epidemic” in our country.
