MAN'S BEST FRIEND?

By Steve Wulf

The boys' father, an Army sergeant, had recently been sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 41st Infantry out of Fort Riley, Kans.; otherwise, Christopher Wilson, 11, and his brother Terrell, 8, had little reason to feel uneasy on that Thursday morning. But as they stood waiting for a school bus in their rural subdivision in Milford on April 24, the Wilsons saw three menacing Rottweilers approaching them. The boys took off for temporary safety in a nearby clump of trees. When the older brother climbed down to run to get help, though, the dogs attacked him. The driver of the school bus, which had just arrived with nearly 20 students aboard, honked her horn in a vain attempt to frighten the animals away. As a neighbor later told the Kansas City Star, "The dogs, they were all sitting around [the body]. It was like they were gloating."

Christopher died of massive injuries, including a broken neck and loss of blood. Two of the dogs were shot and killed by police at the scene, the third later that day; their owners, Jeffrey and Sabine Davidson, were arrested and charged with unintentional second-degree murder, a crime punishable by 11 to 51 years in prison.

The incident would be horrific enough if it were isolated. But on that same day in Lamar, Mo., two pit bulls killed a four-year-old boy while he was playing on a lawn. On April 11, a four-year-old boy in North Carolina was slain by a Rottweiler when the child tried to retrieve a football from a fenced yard. In Prairie Village, Kans., on Feb. 22, a six-year-old boy was so brutally attacked in his own backyard by an akita that he needed 100 stitches and reconstructive facial surgery.

These aren't the usual dog-bites-man stories. They are signs of a growing epidemic. According to Dr. Jeffrey Sacks, an epidemiologist with the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and author of a report released three weeks ago on the problem, dog attacks eclipse measles, mumps and whooping cough combined as a health threat to children. The number of dog bites that caused people to seek medical care increased from 585,000 in 1986 to 800,000 in 1994, a 37% jump during a period in which the dog population rose less than 2%, to 55.8 million.

The increase is due in part to the growing popularity of dogs that people buy to protect themselves against violent crime. The fiercely protective Rottweiler, in particular, has gone from 15th in 1986 to the second most owned dog in the American Kennel Club's registry of breeds. (Between 1979 and 1996, according to Sacks' study, Rottweilers were responsible for 29 fatal attacks, second only to pit bulls, which accounted for 60.) Ann Martin-Gonnerman, president of the Kansas City-based National Society for the Protection of Animals, says the problem isn't so much the canines as it is a breed of people who have "got to have this big, mean dog who's only nice to them. They like it when the dog is aggressive, but it's worse than a loaded gun because you never know what's going to set it off."

Children are most at risk because of their size and ignorance--or innocence--about dogs. (A gentle Rottweiler named Carl is even the star of a popular series of children's books.) They're not the only ones in danger, though. Mailmen have long been a comic foil for mean dogs, but there was nothing funny about the 3,000 attacks on letter carriers last year. According to the Insurance Information Institute, one-third of all liability claims on homeowner's insurance are for dog attacks. "Rottweilers can be great dogs," says Carolyn Gorman, director of the institute's Washington office. "But a lot of people who buy them to deter crime don't have the time or the inclination to train them."

What can be done? Some communities have stiffened leash laws and penalties on owners of dogs that bite. Sacks suggests that owners be required to tattoo any dog that has bitten someone, then be forced to keep the dog chained or fenced if it bites again. When faced with a hostile dog, animal-control experts recommend backing away slowly, rather than trying to outrun it. Shouting a command it may know, like "Sit!," may also stop a dog. And if attacked, curl into a ball with arms and hands over head and neck; don't scream.

Christopher Wilson, however, wasn't an animal-control expert. He was just a kid waiting for the school bus confronted by three dogs that should have been locked up. "These attacks from animals roaming at large in our communities are completely unacceptable," says Sacks. "We are not living on the Serengeti Plains."

--Reported by Ann Blackman/Washington and Daniel S. Levy/New York

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington and Daniel S. Levy/New York