Emergency? Active attack, heavy bleeding, trouble breathing, or someone fainting.
Call 911Reporting a dog bite differs depending on who was involved. Pick one below to see the right steps.
Both? Start with the person.
Today's laws treat dogs as property, so a dog-on-dog attack leaves you with little recourse. Here's how to push for change.
Two problems, two levels of government. State law still treats dogs as property; the City controls how a dog-on-dog report is handled. You can push on both.
Why a dog-on-dog attack leaves you with almost no recourse. This needs the State Legislature.
Sign the state petitionThere's already a New York petition for exactly this — "Dogs are Family not Property." Add your name, then send the message below to the lawmakers who can move a state bill.
These are the committee chairs and legislative leaders who can move a state bill — they represent districts across New York, not just NYC. Tap one to open their contact form, then paste:
Not sure who represents you? Find your own state and local officials by address and contact them too.
The City can fix the part that failed you without waiting on Albany: there's no 311 category for a dog-on-dog attack, and no path into a dangerous-dog review until reports pile up against the same owner.
Sign the NYC petitionA focused city petition asks DOHMH and the City Council to create a real dog-on-dog category and a defined route into the dangerous-dog process. Send the message below to the city officials who can do it:
Tap an official to reach them, then paste:
Not sure who represents you? Find your own city and state officials by address and contact them too.
Officials current as of June 2026.
Report it anyway. File the report even without a name — describe the dog and the owner, note the time and exact location, and save your photos and any witness contacts. If you identify the owner later, you can add it.
Protect your health first. When the dog can't be found for its 10-day rabies observation, tell your doctor the vaccination status is unknown — it may change whether rabies treatment is recommended. The Health Department follows up with the bitten person about rabies precautions even when owner details are missing.
Create a record. For a serious attack, you can also file a report with your local NYPD precinct to create an independent record.
To obtain information the City holds about an owner or a bite, you can file a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the Health Department — search "FOIL" at nyc.gov/help. Responses can take time, and some personal details may be withheld for privacy.
Reporting is what makes anything possible. The Health Department works remotely — it doesn't investigate in the field. It connects reports using the owner's name and contact info, so without that there's nothing to link, and with no official report on file, no further action can be taken. If owner details are missing, the Department follows up with the bitten person about rabies precautions.
Dangerous Dog Investigation. Once enough reports name the same dog and owner, the case goes to Veterinary Public Health Services (646-364-1783) for a dangerous dog investigation. Whether a dog is declared dangerous depends on factors including the tissue damage caused, what was happening at the time, whether a person or an animal was bitten, and the dog's prior bite history.
The investigator works with legal counsel and the Commissioner's office, and the determination goes through the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH). Outcomes arrive as a Commissioner's order — for example, required training or muzzling. Violating that order can bring fines and, in some cases, a criminal matter. Seizure of a dog is possible but is a long path that requires substantial evidence.
For more than a century, U.S. law has treated dogs as personal property. That's slowly shifting — though mostly in divorce and wrongful-death law so far, not dog-bite rules.
Weighing the pet's well-being. Starting with Alaska in 2017, a growing group of states now direct courts to consider an animal's well-being — not just who paid for it — when deciding who keeps a pet in a divorce. New York joined in 2021, along with Illinois, California, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C.
Damages beyond "market value." Tennessee's 2000 "T-Bo Act" lets owners recover limited non-economic damages when a pet is wrongfully killed — a break from the old rule that a dog is worth only its resale price.
On dog-on-dog attacks specifically, some states fold them into a broader "dangerous dog" law. California, for example, lets a court hold a hearing and label a dog "potentially dangerous" or "vicious" when it attacks a person or another domestic animal — a category New York's bite process, built around bites to people, doesn't have.
Approaches vary a lot, but NYC sits at one end of the spectrum: the Health Department reviews bite reports remotely and acts only once complaints accumulate against the same owner.
In-person animal control. Many large cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston among them — run dangerous- or vicious-dog programs through a dedicated animal-care agency that can investigate in the field and hold an administrative hearing, rather than handling everything by mail and phone.
Dog-on-dog is sometimes covered. Where a city's dangerous-dog ordinance follows a state law that counts attacks on other animals (as in much of California), an attack on your dog can itself trigger a review — the gap NYC residents run into.
Local rules differ widely, so check your own city's animal-control ordinance for the specifics.
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