Fido may be cute - but according to epidemiologist Judy Stevens of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) injury center, it is also a walking and barking hazard to your health:
LinkAmerica's dogs and cats, it turns out, can be blamed for injuries caused in an estimated 86,000 falls treated each year in the country's emergency rooms, federal health officials said today.
Nearly 88 percent of those injuries come at the paws of man's best friend, who's more apt to wound the fairer sex, epidemiologists report in today's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). About a quarter of those spills occur when a pet owner is walking his or her dog, and twice as many women as men are hurt.
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Oh those sly dogs, sweeping the women off their feet.
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No one should care about this, and I doubt most people will. Thales, Kalel et al. said it well. Who wasted money on that study?
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Well, if you're someone with two left feet this might be significant for you. If you're naturally clumsy, maybe you should get a hamster. For the rest of us, this is a non-issue.
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Were you aware that your chance of dying in a car accident goes up when you enter a car. Likewise the odds of you being strangled by the President of the United States also skyrockets when you are both in the same city. Thank God for these clever fellows for letting me know that having a pet had such associated risks as tripping over them, I have heard breathing has many ancillary dangers associated with it.
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I agree with Thales and Kalel. The benefits outweigh the potential for harm on this. I've had dogs all my life, as have a lot of people (dogs and cats), and it's not like we're dropping at epidemic proportions.
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