Man’s best friend sometimes isn’t friendly. According to the Ocean County Health Department, more than 4.5 million dog bites are reported each year in the United States. Some 800,000 of them require medical care.
In Ocean County the number of reported dog bites is on the rise. In 2023, 714 were reported. In 2024, that number had increased to 783. In 2025, after just the first six months of the year, a whopping 874 county residents have been bitten.
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
or sign in
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
