In February, Dr. Hetts had the privilege of working with the Denver NBC affiliate – 9News.com – on a series about dog behavior and communication. The station decided to do the series because of the tragic bite to 9News anchor Kyle Dyer that happened unfortunately during a live newscast.
In an attempt to have some good come from a bad situation, 9News invited Suzanne to conduct a training for their staff. As a result of that, they decided to create a week long series with her about understanding dogs and their behavior.
We commend the station for their response to this incident and in their efforts to educate not only their staff but the public as well.
While this may seem like “old news” to some, we were traveling so much in the month after the series was completed that we didn’t have the chance to write this article. Because we were so disturbed by the comments that “blamed” Ms. Dyer for the incident, we did in the meantime, release a 5 page report that was our analysis of and reaction to the biting incident to members of our Behavior Education Network.
Like most bites, factors related to the dog, the environment, the handler and the victim ALL contributed to the bite happening. The purpose of THIS article however, is to provide you with links to the 9News educational series. We are hopeful 9News will continue their efforts to help educate people about dog behavior and safe interactions with dogs, and that we’ll have the opportunity to work with them again in the future. The dog is now back home with his family and Kyle is still recovering and has not yet returned to the air.
Just click on the names of the segments below to be taken to them on 9News.com. The links were current at the time this article was published but we cannot guarantee how long the station will keep the videos active.
How to Say Hello: Greeting Unfamiliar Dogs
Safe Interactions Between Dogs and Children
This segment included clips from YouTube we discovered (and there are many, many) of unsafe interactions between dogs and children. For more information on this subject see our post on “Supervising Dogs and Children".
Offensive and Defensive Behavior
Kyle’s Recovery and More
The link to a related video on this page mentions an “animal behavior” expert. Dr. Phil Tedeschi, a friend and colleague of ours, is not a behavior expert, but instead is the head of the program at Denver University that teaches mental health professionals how to integrate animals into counseling sessions.
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