Dog attack disfigurement data: pit bulls led again in 2025

Data shows disfigurements are increasingly under-reported by news media relative to insurance claims

PHILADELPHIA––Fatal dog attacks often make the top of the television news,  for instance the one in Philadelphia on January 2,  2026 that left a 53-year-old man dead in front of his home from an apparent stress-induced heart attack despite having shot three of his four pit bulls dead indoors after suffering an ankle bite.

Non-fatal dog attacks often do not make news at all,  or if they do,  receive just passing notice,  like one seven miles across north Philadelphia on January 5,  2026,  mentioned only by WCAU.

“Severe bite injuries to face,  leg,  & arm”

According to WCAU,  the adult female victim suffered “severe bite injuries to her face,  leg and arm” from her own three dogs,  apparently pit bulls.

The attack might not have been noted by anyone,  except that “police said the officers at the scene discharged their weapons to stop the attack.”

Cops shooting guns usually do attract at least some transient notice.

 What we forgot to mention about fatalities

ANIMALS 24-7 on January 5,  2026 posted our 43rd annual listing of fatal dog attacks in the U.S. and Canada,  a record of 84 total,  64 of them––76%––by pit bull.

(See Record dog attack & pit bull attack death count in 2025 for 4th year in a row.  Also see our cumulative data report,  Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada,  September 1982 to December 31, 2025.)

ANIMALS 24-7 neglected to point out that only 18 fatal dog attacks occurred during the first decade of our logging the data,  less than a quarter as many as occurred in 2025 alone,  and even the average of 1.8 a year,  1982-1991,  was steeply up from the 1930-1960 time frame.

During the 30 years from 1930 t0 1960,  the U.S. and Canada together averaged less than one reported fatal dog attack per year.  But even then,  when pit bulls were less than 1% of the total dog population according to classified ads listing dogs for sale,  56% of the reported fatal dog attacks were by pit bulls.

The disfigurement data

But that was not the alleged omission that online respondents immediately mentioned.

Almost immediately online commentators mentioned that the numbers we posted,  appalling as they are,  did not yet include the much greater numbers of dog attack disfigurements,  another category of data that ANIMALS 24-7 has logged since 1982,  nor the data pertaining to dog attacks on other animals,  logged since 2013.

Pit bulls in 2025 maintained a 43-year history of accounting for about 70% of reported disfiguring injuries to humans,  despite making up only about 6.3% of the U.S. and Canadian dog population.

That by itself,  though,  may be much less significant than the verifiable and growing extent of under-reporting,  the gist of which is that the harm done by pit bulls continues to be widely under-recognized.

Why under-reporting occurs

Tracking dog attack disfigurements,  and dog attacks on other animals,  have both always been much more difficult than tracking human fatalities,  for one obvious reason:  human deaths are almost always reported somewhere,  in obituaries and police reports,  if not by news media.

Since 1983,  only three dog attack fatalities have come to light––and have been promptly added to our numbers––that we had not logged relatively soon after their occurrence.

Dog attack disfigurements,  once commonly reported by news media because of their relative scarcity,  are ever more significantly under-reported as they become ever more frequent,  and therefore less newsworthy when mass media editors apply the traditional tests of proximity and novelty to potential news items.

Dog attacks on other animals,  a data set that ANIMALS 24-7 will update a few days from now,  are a category rarely if ever tracked by anyone else for any length of time.

How under-reporting can be measured

ANIMALS 24-7 is able to assess the trend of mass media under-reporting dog attack disfigurements by comparing the numbers of disfiguring dog attacks coming to our notice through media coverage to the numbers resulting in insurance industry payouts to victims.

In 2020,  for instance,  according to the Insurance Information Institute,  the insurance industry made 16,991 payouts in claims for dog-inflicted injuries.  Only 5.8% of these cases were reported by news media.

By 2023,  the volume of insurance payouts for dog-inflicted injuries had increased to 19,062.  The percentage of cases reported by news media,  however,  had dropped to just 2.9%.

Assuming that the percentage of disfiguring dog attacks reported by news media was still about 2.9% in 2025,  ANIMALS 24-7 can project that about 1,200 people in the U.S. and Canada were disfigured by dogs,  of whom at least 734,  or 61%,  were disfigured by pit bulls.

Another 240 people project to have been disfigured by dogs not identified.  If pit bulls were represented among the dogs who disfigured those victims at the same ratio as in cases where the dogs were identified,  pit bulls likely disfigured 145,  for a combined total of 879.

Loss of limb vs. facial disfigurement

Disfiguring dog attacks come in two basic varieties.  Second most common are losses of fingers,  toes,  arms,  and legs,  a category of injury skewing heavily toward pit bulls,  Rottweilers,  and other breed types with a gripping style of attack.

Overall,  among attacks by all dog breed types,  for every disfigurement involving loss of one or more limbs,  according to ANIMALS 24-7 data,  there are at least a dozen facial disfigurements,  ranging from lifelong visible scarring to loss of nose,  ears,  an eye,  a cheek,  or a scalping.

Emailed Stuart Hayward,  representing the Los Angeles-based Omega Law Group,  on January 5,  2026,  “Omega Law Group analyzed the strongest U.S. data sets on children and dog bites.  One pattern stood out fast: in emergency room-treated cases,  73% of children are bitten on the face,  head,  or neck.

“For adults,  it’s 30%.”

Hayward provided a link to the Omega Law Group findings:  https://www.omegalaw.com/?utm_source=outreach&utm_medium=shared.

“This isn’t rare”

“This isn’t rare,”  Hayward wrote.  “Emergency departments see 333,687 dog-bite visits a year.  These are routine injuries that lead to scars,  surgery,  and bills,”  with boys in the age range from five years to nine years old at greatest risk,  nearly five times the overall rate.

Among the 11,107 U.S. and Canadian fatal and disfiguring dog attacks logged by ANIMALS 24-7 since 1982,  dog attacks on children outnumbered attacks on adults in almost every year until 2011.

Since then,  though,  coinciding with a steep rise in popularity of pit bulls as pets of single adults,  dog attacks on adults have outstripped reported attacks on children to such an extent that the current overall ratio is now only 44% children,  56% adults.

Pit bull attacks on adults since 2011 have usually been twice as frequent as reported pit bull attacks on children––but children tend to suffer the most grievous disfigurements.

“Young children share space at a dog’s eye-line”

In general,  Hayward explained,  children,  especially young children,  suffer facial injuries from dogs more often than adults because “Young children share space at a dog’s eye line,  which is why face and head injuries dominate pediatric cases,  while adults show more arm and leg wounds.”

Comparing the Omega Law Group data to the ANIMALS 24-7 data,  ANIMALS 24-7 discovered that 89% of disfigurements of children by pit bulls involve facial injuries,  significantly higher than the 73% of children bitten on the face,  head,  or neck by all dogs combined.

Further,  while the Omega Law Group found that only 30% of adults seeking emergency room treatment for dog bites,  all breed types combined,  have been bitten on the face,  head,  or neck,  according to the ANIMALS 24-7 data,  among adult pit bull victims suffering disfiguring injuries,  at least 54% have suffered facial bites.

This figure was identical among 3,539 male victims and 2,004 female victims.

46% of pit bull-inflicted disfigurements may involve loss of a limb

That suggests that up to 46% of disfigurements inflicted by pit bulls may involve loss of a limb,  a much higher ratio than expected.

ANIMALS 24-7 lists as disfigurements,  however,  only attacks of Level 4 and Level 5 severity on the Ian Dunbar scale of dog bite severity,  which probably results in our logging disproportionately more loss of limb cases relative to single severe bites,  some of which may be disfiguring enough to result in insurance claims without being identified as such in news reports.

The Omega Law Group data,  ANIMALS 24-7 suspects,  includes far more typical dog bites,  in which a dog bites,  then retreats,  as opposed to the pit bull attack style of biting,  gripping,  shaking,  pulling the victim down,  and then possibly re-gripping to shake the victim by another appendage.

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