Dog owners in the Van Wert area could see a sticker with a paw print showing up on their mailboxes.
National Dog Bite Awareness week is coming to an end and the Van Wert Post Office has implemented a new sticker system that could help prevent mail carriers from being bitten.
The theme for this year's Dog Bite Awareness Week is “Be Alert: Prevent the Bite.” While the postal workers in Van Wert are already equipped with different technology and gear to keep them safe from potentially harmful dogs, they have made it even easier for mail carriers to identify houses where dogs live at.
Phillip Winfield, a city carrier assistant for the Van Wert Post Office says, “I think the stickers on the boxes are definitely going to help. You know, you get the warning on the house ahead so then you actually know to really be paying attention and cautious.”
The yellow sticker on a mailbox means that the next house on the delivery route has a dog, and the orange sticker means there’s a dog at that house.
Winfield is a mail carrier that travels to different cities in the area to deliver mail. He says he is often not familiar with the neighborhood dogs on most of his routes, so the sticker system will help him be aware of a dog.
“I have nothing against dogs," says Winfield. "But when you don’t know those dogs, they love the families, but they’re not going to love people who they don’t know coming into their territory, you know, because we walk up quickly to the houses and so they think we’re just infringing on their territory and they don’t like that.”
The Van Wert Post Office says they love dogs, and many of the carriers have their own four-legged friend, but not knowing when you are entering the property of where a dog lives can be dangerous to the carriers.
Jessica Chavarria, the Postmaster at Van Wert says, “A lot of the accidents we see or the attacks that we see, they’re most of the time because you can’t see the dog. The dog’s not visible. If you make the dog visible to us, let us know--dogs are surprised when you don’t know they are there.”
Chavarria says that people will receive a postcard with information about the stickers if they are one of the people to receive a sticker, but they are also able to take the stickers off if they are uncomfortable with it.
Winfield says, “Please leave them on your boxes if at all possible because it’s going to help, especially the carriers that are sent around to different cities each day to do the different routes, it makes it easier.”
If you live in Van Wert and have not received a sticker and wish to have one, contact the post office at 419-238-1678.
