MAHONING COUNTY Bites attributed to stray dogs are on the rise, official reports

The problem is much worse in Youngstown than in the rest of the county, the health commissioner said.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Who let the dogs out?
According to a report prepared for Mahoning County's rabies control committee, stray dogs bit 74 people in Youngstown last year. That is nine more people than in 1999 and 44 more than 10 years ago.
In the rest of Mahoning County, eight people were bitten by strays in 2000.
"Stray dogs do account for one-third of all animal bites in Youngstown, so it is a problem," said county health commissioner Matthew Stefanak, who prepared the report with data from the four health departments in the county.
At the pound: The actual population of dogs on the city streets is difficult to estimate, but the number of dogs that pass through the county's pound has decreased over the years, said Carol Markovich, the county dog warden.
As many as 7,000 dogs would pass through the pound each year in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she said. Last year, about 2,000 spent some time in the pound.
"You could go out to the kennel, and out of the 40 dogs there, all but a handful are from Youngstown," she said. "Austintown and Boardman have a comparable population, but the problem between Austintown and Boardman combined is nowhere near the situation of the city of Youngstown."
Total bites: Countywide, health departments reported 454 dog bites last year, 245 of which were in Youngstown. There was a total of 759 bites from animals of any kind, including 76 from cats.
Only one animal, a bat, was confirmed rabid in Mahoning County last year, Stefanak said. There were two confirmed cases of animal rabies in Trumbull county, and none in Columbiana or Ashtabula counties, he said.