In the north-west New South Wales town of Gunnedah, there are much deadlier things than a puppy. They are used to deadly brown and red-bellied snakes.
So Sarah Carter was surprised when her corgi Maxi landed her in hospital.
While training the four-month-old dog to sit, Carter bent down to give Maxi a treat when he jumped up and ripped into her finger.
Immune-suppressed due to chemotherapy, Carter went to hospital where she received antibiotics to avoid the risk of infection and her specialist’s wrath.
She can laugh about the incident now that the wound has healed without complications.
“Corgis [have] got a mind of their own. They’re pretty stubborn little creatures.”
Of the 23,379 injury hospitalisations related to animals in 2021-22, more than half were due to domestic dogs and cats.
A new report released on Wednesday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare links the rising number of animal-related hospitalisations to increased pet ownership since the start of the pandemic.
The report looked at all hospital admissions within the AIHW’s national database where there was an identified animal-related cause of injury between July 2012 and June 2022, and described trends by year, type of animal, age group and types of injury.
The lead author of the report, Dr Sarah Ahmed, said “across the 10-year period, hospitalisations in general increased gradually, but if we look at the common pet hospitalisations, those increased a lot faster, especially since 2019-20”.
The report found a 10% increase in hospitalisations from 2019-20 to 2020-21, which the authors noted corresponded with the increase in pet ownership throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a national survey carried out by Animal Medicines Australia.
The most common injuries were open wounds and fractures, while the commonest body parts injured (nearly half) were upper limbs including wrists and hands, the report found.
It found dogs were the most common animal leading to hospitalisations, with 40% of all injuries from contact with animals due to being bitten or struck by a dog.
Dr Jonathan Karro, the director of emergency medicine at St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne, said the AIHW report’s findings were consistent with the hospital’s experience.
Data from St Vincent’s hospital Melbourne shows the number of animal bites has been going up gradually over the past decade but saw a “significant jump” between 2020 and 2023.
Of patients he sees injured due to animals, Karro estimates 75% are related to dogs, and the vast majority of the others are cats. “And then there’s the odd smattering of other animals – we’ve had the odd rabbit bite and a possum and a bat, and we get occasionally monkeys but those are often returned travellers from Bali.”
A common occurrence is a patient coming in after attempting to break up a fight between their own dog and another dog they encounter on a walk. Somewhere between 40 and 50% of those patients will need to be admitted to hospital because the wound is significant enough to require an operation to clean it and receive antibiotics, Karro said.
The data from emergency department presentations did not include the cause of injury, so the report only included hospital-admitted patients.
The report acknowledges it likely underestimates the total impact of injuries as it does not count injuries where healthcare is provided outside hospitals.
Dr Christopher Harrison from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Sydney said the report was likely “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to animal-related injuries as it only captured the most serious incidents.
Based on the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health national study of GPs’ clinical activity, Harrison estimated GPs saw about 49,000 dog bite and 6,000 cat bite patients in 2015-16 – a number which is likely now larger.
