Psychological Injuries After Dog Attacks: PTSD, Anxiety, and Compensation in BC

A dog attack can leave scars. Some are obvious: puncture wounds, bruising, torn clothing, stitches, infection, or permanent marks on the skin.

Others are less visible.

A dog-attack victim may stop walking in their neighbourhood. They may cross the street when they see a dog. They may feel their chest tighten when they hear barking. They may stop visiting friends with pets. They may sleep badly, replay the attack, or feel embarrassed that their body is reacting so strongly to “just a dog.”

But it was not “just a dog”; it was an animal attack. Your nervous system is primed to be exquisitely tuned to remembering gnashing teeth.

For most of human history, being attacked by an animal was a survival problem. Sudden movement, growling, biting, pain, blood, and helplessness are the kind of events the brain is designed to store aggressively. That is biology doing what biology does: trying to keep you alive. It’s Hebbian learning. The concept is that “neurons that fire together, wire together”, or the sensory system strengthens the neurological connections of dog=bite=danger.

The problem is when the neurological/psychological alarm system keeps ringing after the danger is gone.

Why Dog Attacks Can Cause Real Psychological Injury

A dog attack is often sudden, loud, chaotic, and frightening. One moment a person is walking, jogging, visiting a home, delivering a package, taking out the garbage, or standing in an elevator. The next moment there is barking, lunging, pain, panic, thrashing, and a desperate attempt to get free.

The amygdala (an almond-shaped cluster of brain cells in your temporal lobe), which is involved in fear detection, can become highly activated during an animal attack. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol help the body respond in the moment in what is commonly known as a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.

An animal attack victim may find themselves experiencing faster heart rate, sharper attention, muscle tension, and tunnel vision. The amygdala sort of emotionally colours an event, facilitating long-term memory storage. The hippocampus, another part of the human brain involved in memory and context, may also encode the event in a way that makes reminders feel immediate. A bark, a leash, a park, a particular street, or even the sound of claws on flooring can bring the person right back to the attack.

While it may be useful during an animal attack to be “amped up” and ready to fight, it is less useful when a 10 lb hyper-reactive miniature dachshund triggers your fear and defence cascade – mimicking the sensation and stress of a previous animal attack. Logically, you know the wiener dog isn’t really a threat, but your amygdala has burned the previous attack into your nervous system. Sometimes it’s a bark, a leash, a particular park or street. Anything linked to the previous trauma/attack can make you feel like you’re being attacked again.

Common Psychological Side Effects of a Dog Attack

When a dog attack legal case comes across my desk, I’m careful to assess some common symptoms like:

• Nightmares;
• Intrusive memories;
• Panic around dogs;
• Avoidance of parks, sidewalks, elevators, or homes with pets;
• Sleep disruption;
• Irritability;
• Hypervigilance;
• Shame or embarrassment;
• Crossing the road to avoid a dog;
• Depression;
• Loss of confidence outdoors;
• And more.

In more serious cases, a dog bite victim may develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The DSM-5 framework for PTSD looks at trauma exposure, intrusive symptoms, avoidance, negative changes in mood or thinking, and changes in arousal or reactivity. Plainly: the event keeps coming back, the person starts avoiding reminders, their mood and beliefs may shift, and their body stays on guard. Remember, not every injury bleeds.

The Serious Effect of Scarring on Dog Attack Victims

Not everyone bitten by a dog develops PTSD; it is almost important to keep a lookout for other psychological injuries that commonly arise out of dog bites.

Imagine a hand model that has extensive lacerations leading to scarring. Aside from the loss of income because they can no longer work, the victim may become self-conscious about their scars. What if the dog bit your face? They might be thinking: “I’m self-conscious already and don’t need another defect or asymmetry to fixate on”.

Facial scarring can be particularly problematic in the current era of social-media-filtered-perfection. A young person going through their formative adolescence is at particular risk of having their life affected. They may get tired of people looking them in the eyes, and then watching their focus shift slightly up and to the right where their scars are, all the time. Maybe the plastic surgeon did their best to repair the dog bite lacerations, but nonetheless, the victim chooses to avoid public-facing careers. A person’s confidence, and indeed income-earning potential, is positively correlated to facial symmetry.

When there is extensive scarring, and it changes a dog bite victim’s career options, it’s important to pay attention to the evidentiary foundation for a claim for loss of earning capacity. How many lifetime career promotions were missed out on because a victim doesn’t like putting in face time with the bosses? How do you calculate the losses of a young person abandoning their dream of a lucrative sales career because they don’t like being in public anymore? These can be massive losses to a person’s career, but without properly setting out an evidentiary basis, you can bet the defence will be saying “the [victim] works from home, they’re fine, just like they told their neighbour that one time in casual conversation we’re taking out of context!”

The civil justice system is adversarial in nature. Never assume the obvious human consequences of facial scarring will prove themselves. They need to be built, carefully and deliberately, through documentation such as:

• Medical evidence;
• Psychological evidence;
• Lay witnesses;
• School and work history;
• Career planning evidence;
• Vocational and economic opinions, where appropriate;
• And possibly more.

The scars may be visible to everyone, but the loss behind it still has to be proven.

A Dog Bite Can Leave More Than a Scar

One mistake people often make is assuming that compensation after a dog attack is only about the physical bite.

That is not correct.

In a personal injury claim, the law is concerned with the whole person. The physical wound matters, but so does the fear. So does the sleep loss. So does the fact that the person used to run the seawall, walk their own dog, visit family, or take their child to the park — and now they do not.

The basic purpose of tort law is compensation, and to put the injured person, insofar as money reasonably can, back in the position they would have been in had the wrongful act not occurred.

Many clients so: “No amount of money is enough; I’d rather have my life back”. This is completely understandable. Unfortunately, compensation is what the civil justice system provides to survivors. With a broken bone, that may involve treatment costs, income loss, and pain. With a psychological injury, the same principle applies. The law asks what was taken from the person’s life and what is reasonably required to address it.

If someone had pre-existing anxiety but a dog attack made it worse, that can also matter. Defendants do not get a discount simply because the person was vulnerable. A vulnerable person may be easier to hurt, and harder to fix. The law generally takes people as they are. Some people are more psychologically susceptible to trauma, just as some people are more physically susceptible to injury. A fragile person is still entitled to be protected from foreseeable harm, even if their reaction may at first seem disproportional to the harm caused.

What Evidence Helps Prove Psychological Injury After a Dog Attack?

The best evidence is specific, consistent, and grounded in real life. A doctor’s note saying “anxiety” is useful. A detailed history is better. For example:

• “I avoid the street where it happened.”
• “I wake up from nightmares twice a week, and have flashbacks of the attack during the day”
• “I cannot take my child to the park if dogs are off leash.”
• “I used to run outside; now I only use a treadmill.”
• “I panic when I hear barking behind me.”
• “I no longer visit my sister because she has a large dog.”

Treatment records matter too. These form the evidentiary foundation of the case, and experts will rely on them to solidify their diagnosis and prognosis. Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, exposure therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), medication, psychiatric consultation, or psychological assessment can all help document the injury and support recovery.

Family members are often important witnesses, too. They may notice the person is jumpier, more withdrawn, less social, less active, more irritable, or afraid in situations they previously handled easily.

Photographs of the physical injuries can also help. A visible wound often explains why the mind reacted as it did. Gruesome photographs put in front of a judge or jury will help them understand why a dog bite victim has ongoing impacts.

Suffering From the Psychological Effects of a Dog Attack? You May Have Legal Options

Many people downplay psychological symptoms after a dog attack because they feel embarrassed. They tell their doctor they are “fine.” They tell family it is “not a big deal.” They try to tough it out.

This is understandable. However, it is also usually a mistake that the defence will try to capitalize on.

If you are having nightmares, say so. If you avoid dogs, say so. If you feel panic, shame, anger, or fear, say so. If your child will not go outside, say so. The medical record should reflect reality, not politeness. Don’t let “I’m fine” become the defence’s theory of the case.

There is no medal for pretending your nervous system is not on fire.

The dog may have moved on.

The owner may have moved on.

But the injured person may still be living with the attack every day.

The bite is only the beginning of the story.

That is why psychological injuries after dog attacks deserve to be recognized, documented, treated, and compensated. Not because every frightening event becomes a lawsuit, but because when preventable harm changes a person’s life, the civil justice system looks at the whole injury.

Where the defence may be trying to measure a person’s losses in the number of stitches, we are dedicated to looking for the places where the dog attack is still showing up in a victim’s life years later. If your life has been affected by a dog bite or attack, our Vancouver dog bite lawyers at Preszler Injury Lawyers can assess your options for legal action. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

We’re here to help.