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Who let the dogs out? Getting backlisted by USPS. Sunday, January 24, 2010

For US Postal Service (USPS) carriers, dogs are not always man's best friend.

In 2008, 3,100 mail carriers around the country were bitten by dogs or received dog attack-related injuries. For each year between 2001 and 2008, there were more than 3,000 dog bite attacks on USPS workers, although annual dog bite incidents have declined significantly from the mid-1990s peak of more than 7,000 a year.

As the owner of two large dogs - one very placid and friendly, the other more skittish and… well, let's just says he's got issues – I can understand the USPS' concerns.

Our mailbox is attached to the house next to the front door, so to get to it the postie (Australian for mail carrier) has to come in through the front gate. On Saturdays and other occasions I'm at home during the week, both dogs like to greet the postie as he comes to deliver the mail – one with a wag of the tail, the other with a fearsome bark.

We try to keep the dogs in the house around the time we anticipate mail delivery, but this guesswork is not always successful. We've received a few polite requests to keep the dogs inside over the last year or so, but we always seem to forget, especially when there are squirrels to be chased out of the yard.

The first Saturday of 2010 was the final straw. We heard the fateful click of the front gate followed by Foley's manic barking. My wife raced out to grab him, but the postie had already fled the yard.

And that was it. We'd received enough warnings. We were blacklisted.

For the next week we would go outside and check the mailbox, vainly hoping for some sign that we had been forgiven – even some unwanted junk mail would have given us a glimmer of hope – but alas, we were inevitably left staring at an empty mailbox.

A week later we received the official notification: "This letter is to inform you that we are concerned that your dog may have a propensity to attack and to bite or otherwise injure your letter carrier. To provide uninterrupted mail delivery while protecting your letter carrier, we are asking for your assistance."

With that we went out and bought a new mailbox and mounted it to the front fence. No more forgetting about the dogs in the yard; no more worry for our postie.

Yesterday I opened the new mailbox for the first time. There was mail in it. It was a joyous sight.

Each year, the Postal Service participates in National Dog Bite Prevention Week to raise awareness about the need for pet owners to help prevent dog bites.

via www.bestfriendnyc.com