Postal Service Videos Promote Dog-Bite Awareness
By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 26, 2006
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.)
Price started taping. Hyson released the unwitting star from the kitchen. Chester ambled down the hall to the door and shook himself, not as interested in Guy as he was in Price's Betacam. Chester's focus problem was eventually solved by motivating him with bits of cheese, and the scene wrapped after a series of takes.
The heavies rolled in at 10:30 a.m. -- three corporals and a sergeant from the K-9 unit of the Charles County Sheriff's Office. Their squad cars rocked, vicious gnashing sounds coming from the German shepherds and Belgian malinois inside: Aris and Ozzy and Odie and Scooby and Brit and Karr. They all smelled Chester.
The officers held coffee cups and watched the shooting of the "mail reception safety" scene: Four-year-old Gina DeLancey sprinted across Saunders's lawn toward Guy's mail truck, only to be sternly recalled by her mother, Toni, the Postal Service's community relations manager. (Never let your children race toward the carrier with the dog around: Spot could perceive the exchange of mail as a threat.)
In the day's final scene, Sgt. Vincent Weaver, bitten by more dogs than he cares to remember, played the innocent pedestrian who illustrates how to negotiate an attack: Don't run, put something between you and the dog, or curl up in a fetal position and cup your hands around your ears.
"I only want to do this once," Weaver said, as the officers laced a leather wrap on his left arm.
Price set up the camera on a neighbor's lawn, and Cpl. Renee Cuyler restrained Ozzy behind some landscaping. Weaver walked up the lawn, saying, "Take one, and only!"
Cuyler released Ozzy, who promptly latched his jaws on Weaver's arm, exerting 750 pounds of pressure per square inch.
Cut! The take was good, and the star was escorted back to his trailer.
Next-door neighbor Ruth Page wandered over. "I live right here," she said to the officers. "I just wanted to know if there was a reason to be concerned."
Squad cars, six snarling dogs, camera crew, reporter and photographer? No, ma'am, nothing to worry about.
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