Corfu mail carriers come up with dog warning system

Two dogs were enclosed behind a chain-link fence when a carrier arrived to deliver the mail.

When she opened the box to place the letters inside, both dogs hit the gate aggressively and it opened.

As the carrier fended off one dog, the other bit her. So she fended off the second canine, only to be bit again by the first.

A good Samaritan driving by saved her, beating the dogs off of her, until maintenance workers from a nursing home across the street also ran to her aid. In total the carrier would receive 22 bites all over her body, except one arm and her face.

“She missed a few years of work and is now on limited duty,” said Postmaster Michael Romaszko of the Corfu Post Office, recounting a story he heard from another postal worker in Buffalo. “This happened about six years ago, and she now suffers from PTSD. Just the sound of a dog barking affects her greatly, so she cannot deliver on the street at all.”

Dog bites are a general problem for mail carriers. A total of 82 dog attacks were reported last year in Western New York, compared to 69 in 2015.

Of those 82 incidents, there were two dog attacks in Albion and one in Arcade.

Although it isn’t a big problem in Corfu, Romaszko said he knew there were three dog bites last week in his district. So to address the dilemma, the Corfu Post Office team came up with the idea to combat the issues — a dog warning system.

The dog warning system comes in the form of small stickers on the mailboxes.

“What we have is a sticker, where if you are coming up to a house that might have a dog next door, you put a white sticker on (the mailbox),” Romaszko said. “If you got one at the house, but its not a bad dog — it just might be a sleeping dog — you put a sleeping sticker on, so they know to make noise so they don’t startle the dog and get bit. Or if we had problems with the dog in the past where they have an actual, ‘almost-got-bit’ kind of thing, we have an orange sticker for it.”

Romaszko said a lot of dog bites happen when a dog gets startled by a carrier.

Homeowners don’t need to volunteer information — mail carriers know where the dogs are on their route, and they’ll be the ones putting the stickers on the mailboxes. Romaszko described it as a team building project for the Corfu Post Office carriers, so everyone knows where the dogs are on the routes between the regulars and relief carriers.

“We’re trying to prevent everything,” he said. “We’re not only trying to prevent our carriers from getting hurt, but also trying to prevent any liabilities from the customers in an event there was a dog bite.”

Currently the program is only in Corfu, Darien and Pembroke, but if it goes well, it might expand. The Corfu Post Office started working on the project a month ago and everything was rolled out this week.

If any customer objects to having a paw sticker placed on their mailbox, they can call the Corfu Post Office at (585) 599-3101 or e-mail Michael.A.Romaszko@usps.gov, and the post office will remove it immediately.  Source: thedailynewsonline.com