Tonight, it’s been a week since a dog named Frazier went Cujo, killing a cat, attacking its owner and keeping a Lewiston neighborhood in suspense until after midnight.

Since the ill-tempered Great Dane was euthanized, approximately 100,000 more Americans have been bitten by a dog. That’s based on the five million attacked in an “average” year.

More than 800,000 of those annual victims will require medical treatment. Fifteen, or perhaps more, will die.

Scary thought? Most frightening to me – owner of no pets and dog-tolerant, at best – is that dog owners themselves essentially control those numbers.

Jan and Rini Barlow aren’t being condemned here. They were prey, not perpetrators.

Close calls

Consider your close canine encounters on an average day.

On your way to the office, a Doberman dashes from a driveway and keeps pace with your Chevy for a quarter-mile.

At noon, you pull into the best available parking space at the supermarket. The owner of a pickup truck was kind enough to give his wolf-dog hybrid ample air and roll down both windows all the way.

Fido’s ventilation becomes your hyperventilation. He’s loud. He lunges. You burn off lunch with an all-out sprint to the door, traffic be damned.

Later that night, it’s off to your child’s Little League game. There, a man with no apparent visual impairment wields a pit bull on a 15-foot leash. The animal snarls, showing excessive interest in your hot dog (and, you hope, not the hand that’s holding it).

Toddler in tow, you swerve toward the bleachers. Poochie’s owner senses your reluctance and concludes that it’s a character flaw.

“Aw, he’s just being friendly. He loves kids.”

You assure him that you’ll take his word for it.

It’s a simple problem, really.

Why own them?

Not all dogs make great pets. And in the same manner that thousands of people in our midst have proven themselves untrustworthy with children or guns, not everyone should own a dog.

Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, for instance.

They’re husband-and-wife attorneys from San Francisco. They owned two Presa Canario dogs, a type originally bred in Europe for fighting. The city government in Akron, Ohio, considers this breed so dangerous that it requires owners to have insurance for them.

Insurance couldn’t save Diane Whipple. Knoller failed to restrain her dogs when they attacked and killed Whipple, who was 33. Knoller was convicted of second-degree murder, Noel of manslaughter. They’re already out on parole.

Wouldn’t dare compare a Great Dane with those mongrels, even if the one in Lewiston was trained to hunt bears.

But ask yourself: Is there any good reason to own a dog for whom mauling a smaller animal or human being to death can’t be considered out of character?

Protecting your family and property doesn’t count. Buy an alarm system, already.

Pit bull mixes and Rottweilers are the dogs most likely to kill or maim. But at least 30 breeds have been documented in fatal attacks since 1975, according to a report by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

For what it’s worth, Great Danes are squarely in the top 10, responsible for 13 fatalities.

Bet Jan Barlow sees that total, rubs his sore arm and considers it his lucky number.

Kalle Oakes is staff columnist. He may be reached by e-mail at koakes@sunjournal.com.