S.D. 11TH ON LIST OF DOG BITES ON MAIL CARRIERS

City was No. 2 on U.S. Postal Service’s annual rankings for attacks

On this list of shame, San Diego ranks No. 11. That’s not good, but it’s better than it used to be.

The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday issued its annual ranking of cities with the highest number of reported dog bites sustained by postal carriers in the previous calendar year.

San Diego and Columbus, Ohio, tied at 11th with 31 attacks each.

The Postal Service said more than 5,400 of its employees were attacked by dogs across the country last year.

“Last year, many attacks reported by letter carriers came from dogs whose owners regularly stated, ‘My dog won’t bite,’ ” the agency said Thursday in a news release announcing the rankings.

“Dog bites are entirely preventable. One bite is one too many.”

The annual list is designed to highlight the seriousness of the issue and is often released around National Dog Bite Awareness Week, which this year started Sunday.

In recent years, San Diego’s highest number of reported dog attacks on postal carriers happened in 2011, with 67 attacks — ranking behind only Los Angeles, which had 83 attacks that year.

For a few years — rankings issued in 2011, 2012 and 2016 for attacks from the previous year — San Diego held the second-place spot for the number of dog attacks. The city’s rank climbed and dropped a notch or two but generally landed in the top five during that time span.

The attacks in the city have dropped, now hovering at the bottom of or just outside the top-10 list.

The Postal Service asks that when a letter carrier arrives at a residence, dogs should be inside or behind a fence, away from the door or in another room or on a leash.