CINCINNATI — Biting dogs are a danger all year but the danger is far more prevalent during warm weather — especially for your letter carrier.

More doors are open — more pets are outside — conditions are just “right” for dogs to put in for the neighborhood menace award by ripping away at the nearest postal uniform...and the carrier who is wearing it.

It’s serious but the problem is not the dogs. It’s the owners who neglect to control their pets. And it’s not just big dogs. The little ones can do a lot of damage too.

To see how serious the dog-bite problem is to the Postal Service, just take a look at these statistics:

Somewhere in the country, every minute, a dog bites somebody. The “somebody” most often is your friendly neighborhood letter carrier, who just wants to get the job done and walk away in one piece. Nationally, USPS employees suffered 2613 dog bites and attacks last year. Already this year there have been 1005 bites and attacks.

What can you do, as a customer and a pet owner? Plenty!

• Recognize that you are the key person responsible for controlling your pet.
• Teach each of your family members what they can do to help prevent dog bites.
• Make a commitment to control your pet.
• Let your letter carrier know you are taking action to protect him or her against bites.

Not only does the law require it, so does the Postal Service. Failure to control your pet can result in loss of delivery service!

But more than that: you owe it to yourself, and to your pet, to prevent the pain, lost work time, and general hassle that follows when your dog takes advantage of summer dog days (or any other days) to harm a letter carrier who is trying to perform a service to your household.

Keep your pet leashed, fenced, or confined.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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A list of processing facilities studied, FAQs, mail processing b-roll, and additional information can be found at usps.com/ourfuturenetwork.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With nearly 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service was ranked number one in overall service performance, out of the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, Oxford Strategic Consulting. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.