Star Time for Charles County Canines

Postal Service Videos Promote Dog-Bite Awareness

Mail carrier Shawn Guy poses for Postal Service photographer Gerald Merna as Chester is lured to jump at a front door during a video shoot. (Linda Davidson - The Washington Post)

Dogs can jump through screens and glass. They can break metal leashes and vault picket fences. Then they can bite the suspicious, the oblivious, the young, the elderly. And they go for mail carriers, who traverse their territory daily.

More than 4 million people were bitten by dogs last year, half of them children and 3,475 of them mail carriers, said U.S. Postal Service spokesman Mark Saunders. The frequency of attacks increases as the weather warms.

Hence, National Dog Bite Prevention Week, sponsored by the Postal Service -- this year to be observed May 21-28.

"There are two things people say that are almost always false: 'The check is in the mail' and 'Don't worry, my dog won't bite,' " said Saunders, patting his dog Chester, an easygoing springer spaniel who will be 13 years old on April Fools' Day.

Surely Chester, of all dogs, wouldn't bite.

"He snapped at a girl once," Saunders said.

Postal Service employees were counting on that canine excitability Wednesday morning as they taped a public service video for Dog Bite Prevention Week on Saunders's cul-de-sac in Waldorf.

Given the town's policy of curbside mail delivery, Waldorf doesn't have as many attacks as such dog-bite hotspots as Houston, Los Angeles and Cincinnati, where the week's events will kick off early, with a chorus line of mail carriers showing their scars on May 18.

But Waldorf does have photogenic Wisteria Lane-ish environs and, of course, Chester. By 9:15 a.m. Wednesday, the star spaniel was ready for his close-up in Saunders's neighbor's house.

Greg Price, the audiovisual producer, had specific directions for Chester and Luvenia Hyson, the Postal Service's communications coordinator, who showed up to take photos but ended up snagging the role of Safety-Conscious Homeowner.

The script: Smiling postal carrier Shawn Guy (almost bitten by a leashless yellow Lab a couple of years ago) rings the doorbell and Chester bounds to the glass door; Hyson leashes him, encloses him in another room and accepts the package. That way, Chester isn't scrambling to get out the door, Hyson doesn't have to struggle with him, and no one gets hurt.

"I don't know if I'm going to be good with this," Hyson said, gripping the leash as Chester frisked. "I'm not really good with pets." (A dog attacked her brother when they were little, Hyson confided between takes, and she's been distrustful of the species since.)