Man’s best friend? Not when there’s a gun lying around

This past weekend, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Trigger accidentally shot an Indiana woman in the foot during a hunting trip, according to news reports.

The woman had left her loaded shotgun on the ground with the safety off. Trigger stepped on it, inadvertently pressing the trigger. The woman took a shotgun blast to her left foot at point-blank range.

After getting patched up at area hospitals, she is expected to make a full recovery, joining a short list of Americans who apparently have been shot by their dogs, according to news reports: five others since 2011, and 10 in total since 2004.

But this number is a floor, not a ceiling. If someone gets shot by their dog and doesn’t seek medical care, or it otherwise doesn’t make the news, nobody’s going to know about it.

It’s a bit misleading to say a dog “shot someone.” After all, dogs don’t pick up firearms with the intent to shoot something. But they do end up inadvertently depressing a trigger from time to time.

Many dog-shoots-human stories involve hunting mishaps.

In 2013, a Minnesota hunter was shot in the leg when his dog jumped into his boat and set off a shotgun. In 2011, a Utah hunter left his shotgun on a boat. His dog jumped on it, sending a blast of birdshot through the man’s buttocks. Two weeks later, a Florida bulldog named Eli shot his owner with a rifle while in a car on the way to a hunting spot.

Florida appears to be home to several more of these accidents:

Adog shot his owner in the leg with a .380 pistol while riding in his truck.

A dog jumped onto a bed and knocked another .380 pistol on the ground, shooting its “extremely intoxicated” owner in the hand.

A three-month-old shepherd-mix puppy shot a man in the wrist with a revolver in 2004 while the man was trying to shoot the puppy and its siblings “because he couldn’t find them a home.”

When dogs pull the trigger the outcome is rarely fatal. The one tragic exception is the case of the Texas hunter who, in 2008, took a shotgun blast to the thigh when his dog jumped on the gun in the bed of his truck. He later died of blood loss. When people, dogs and guns mix, the dogs are usually at the receiving end of the gunfire.

Only one instance of a cat shooting its owner was found.