By LEANNE ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) — The cuddles. The loyalty. The worshipful eyes. There’s a lot of joy in having a dog, not the least of which is heading out for a brisk walk. And therein lies a peril some dog people should pay more attention to.

Over the past 20 years, injuries related to dog walking have been on the rise among adults and children in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University researchers. Fractures, sprains and head trauma are among the most common.

FILE – A dog walker walks with her dogs near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis on Dec. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, File)

From 2001 to 2020, the estimated number of adults seen at emergency departments for dog-walking injuries increased significantly, from 7,300 to 32,300 a year, lead researcher Ridge Maxson told The Associated Press. Most patients were women (75%). Adults overall between ages 40 and 64 amounted to 47%.

And that’s just emergency room visits. “We know that a significant number of people might seek treatment at primary care, specialty or urgent care clinics for their injuries,” Maxson said.

Dog ownership has become increasingly common, he noted, with about half of U.S. households having at least one dog. The pandemic contributed to the spike.

How to protect yourself

Staying safe when walking a leashed dog takes diligence, focus and, in inclement weather, extra precautions. Multitasking can be hazardous. Put your phone away.

“You can’t really afford to relax when you walk a powerfully built dog with the torque of a small tractor. You have to pay attention,” said Noel Holston, a dog owner in Athens, Georgia.

In the early 2000s, Holston was walking his 65-pound (29.4-kilogram) pit bull in a park near home when a goose flapped and squawked. The dog bolted down an embankment, jerking the now 76-year-old Holston off the sidewalk.

FILE – A woman walks a dog across the street in Denver on Oct. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

“Off balance and struggling to keep my footing, I stepped into a hole and heard my left ankle snap. The pain was so intense. I almost passed out. My wife, Marty, had to hail a jogger to help get me back to our car. My left foot was dangling like a big wet noodle,” he said.

Susannah Johnston, 64, is a yoga instructor who runs a 40,000-member Facebook group for women aimed at improving balance, strength and a body’s ability to absorb impact. She’s been injured three times while dog walking over the years.

About five years ago, her 50-pound (22.6-kilogram) lab mix went after a squirrel while Johnston was kneeling to tuck a sweatshirt into her backpack, the leash wrapped around one hand. She fractured a finger.

“That was the worst because it was twisted and pulled and I had to have surgery and rehab and everything else,” said Johnston, who lives in New York’s Croton-on-Hudson.

Susannah Johnston, of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., poses her dog Ellie on Sept. 8, 2024 in Norfolk, Conn. Johnston, a fit yoga instructor and strength trainer, has been injured three times in incidents involving walking her dog. (Vincent Cohan via AP)

Running with a leashed dog is another hazard no matter how well trained you think a dog is. It’s especially dangerous with a dog that’s easily spooked, very young or prone to the zoomies. That’s what happened to Robert Godosky in Manhattan.

“We used to be in a routine of sort of running the last block home,” he said. “There was a section of sidewalk that had scaffolding up. My dog is a rescue dog and was relatively new to us. He got spooked and got in front of me, and I went flying over the dog and smacked into the scaffolding. I ended up breaking two ribs.”

There are other hazards in rural areas, said Steven Haywood, an ER doctor in Corinth, Mississippi.

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“Getting struck by vehicles,” he said. “That’s definitely the most life-threatening injury when people are walking their dogs.”

Areas like his have many roads without sidewalks or wide shoulders. That’s especially hazardous when people wear dark clothes with no reflectors or lights on human or animal.

“It’s something we see on a regular basis,” Haywood said.

The right shoes, leashes and more

In addition to lights and reflectors, there is other gear that can minimize dog-walking risks:

Wear appropriate footwear with decent treads in snow and ice. Consider wearing footwear with spikes or studs.

Maxson suggests using a non-retractable leash of 6 to 8 feet (1.8 to 2.4 meters). “Longer leashes are more likely to get tangled around your legs and cause falls. Retractable leashes can sometimes make your dog more difficult to control.”

FILE – A dog walker checks a mobile device while guiding dogs in Washington Park in Denver on Feb. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

In San Francisco, dog trainer Shoshi Parks recommends a no-pull harness with a leash clipped to a dog’s chest rather than their back, she said. It gives the walker more control and puts less strain on the dog.

Parks suggests holding a leash at your center of gravity, near your torso, hip or thigh. Slip your hand through the loop of a leash and grab it a little lower down to hold on.

She calls retractable leashes a “no go.” Period. They can cause burns when held too close to the body if they lengthen or retract quickly.

Dog walkers and dog trainers

For people with mobility or balance issues, experts suggest seeking help walking a dog, especially in inclement weather. A neighbor, an older child or a professional dog walker, for instance.

FILE – A couple walk in the rain with their dog along the Huntington Beach Pier in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Johnston, Haywood and Maxson agreed that balance and strength-training exercises, especially for older adults, can help decrease the risk of falls and fractures.

And they said working with a dog trainer helps not only the dog but the walker, who can learn to read their pet’s body language better.

“Even young, healthy, strong people may have difficulty controlling larger breeds that aren’t used to walking on a leash. Any exercise to give strength, give balance, is going to help,” Haywood said. “Make sure you can control the dog that you’re walking.”

Leanne Italie writes about wellness, culture and style. You can find her at http://twitter.com/litalie.

By JAMEY KEATEN and KAREEM CHEHAYEB

GENEVA (AP) — Human rights advocates are calling for an independent investigation into the deadly explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon and Syria, suggesting the blasts may have violated international law if the devices were fashioned as booby traps.

The explosions that have been widely blamed on Israel killed at least 37 people and wounded more than 3,000, including many members of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement.

The United Nations human rights office and some advocacy groups have cried foul, arguing that the strikes were “indiscriminate” because it’s nearly impossible to know who was holding the devices, or where they were, when they went off. But some academics insist the explosions were precisely focused because the devices had been distributed to Hezbollah members.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which aims to help protect civilians and other noncombatants in conflict and aims to stay neutral, said: “This was a unique operation, and it will take time to have all the facts to establish a legal opinion.”

The committee declined to comment publicly about whether the operation violated international humanitarian law, which is difficult to enforce and sometimes flouted by countries.

International law has never addressed the targeting of communication devices that people carry on their bodies. The Geneva Conventions, which provide a rule book for the protection of civilians during conflict, were adopted 75 years ago, long before pagers, mobile phones and walkie-talkies were in widespread public use. The legal situation is further complicated by the fact that Hezbollah is an armed nonstate group acting inside Lebanon, a sovereign member of the U.N.

“There must be an independent, thorough and transparent investigation as to the circumstances of these mass explosions, and those who ordered and carried out such an attack must be held to account,” the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said in a statement.

Did devices amount to booby traps?

The question of how to apply international rules to the attack seems to center mostly on whether a secret explosive embedded in a personal electronic device might be considered a booby trap. Israel has been blamed for targeted strikes and assassinations in the past, but a large strike using mobile communication devices is virtually unheard of.

A booby trap is defined as “any device designed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object,” according to Article 7 of a 1996 adaptation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which Israel has adopted.

The protocol prohibits booby traps “or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said the rules were designed to protect civilians and avoid “the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today.” She too called for an impartial investigation.

The convention also sets rules for the use of land mines, remnants of cluster bombs and other explosives. It bars use of other “manually emplaced munitions,” such as improvised explosive devices that “are designed to kill or injure, and which are actuated manually, by remote control or automatically after a lapse of time.”

The pagers were used by members of Hezbollah, but there was no guarantee that the members would be holding the devices when they went off. Many of the casualties were among members of Hezbollah’s extensive civilian operations mainly serving Lebanon’s Shiite community.

Laurie Blank, a professor at Emory Law School in Atlanta who specializes in international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, said the law of war doesn’t prohibit use of booby traps outright, but places limits on them. She said she believed the attack was “most likely lawful under international law.”

She said booby traps can be used to target enemy forces in or near a military objective, including the communication systems used by Hezbollah fighters.

“That said, it’s not clear that this is a booby-trap scenario. For example, if the attack is attacking the pagers themselves, then it’s not an issue of booby-trapping,” Blank wrote in an email.

Did ‘indiscriminate’ nature of attack make it illegal?

Experts said the pager explosions suggested a long-planned and carefully crafted operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

“There is no world in which the explosion of hundreds, if not thousands, of pagers is not an indiscriminate attack prohibited by international law,” Mai El-Sadany, who heads the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, a Washington-based think tank, wrote on X.

“The pager holders were scattered across civilian areas, from shopping malls to crowded streets and apartment buildings to hospitals, surrounded by women, children and men,” she told The Associated Press. “An attack like this cannot anticipate what innocent passerby is in the impact area or what carefree child picks up the pager when it beeps.”

British lawyer Geoffrey Nice, who prosecuted former Yugoslav and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, said in an interview: “It’s pretty obvious here it’s a war crime. And we should call it out for what it is.”

But he noted criminal conduct on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict, alluding to rocket strikes by Hamas on Israel and casualties caused by Israel’s military operation in Gaza, where the Health Ministry says at least 41,000 people have been killed since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the latest war.

Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and European Union.

Rules require countries to ‘minimize’ harm

Amos Guiora, a professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, said the strikes were “justified in the context of self-defense,” but he acknowledged the risks of collateral damage against civilians.

“International law does not articulate a number as to what is legitimate or illegitimate collateral damage, it’s just to ‘minimize.’ The tragic reality of collateral damage is that innocent people will be harmed and killed,” he said. “I do have a sense on this one that there was a conscious effort to minimize it — with the understanding it will be never perfect.”

“This particular attack strikes me — whoever did it — is as pinpointed as pinpointed can be,” said Guiora, who spent 20 years in the Israeli military and advised its commanders in Gaza in the 1990s.

Israel has already faced heavy international criticism over its military response in Gaza and, more recently, in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

Back in May, the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Hamas leaders behind the attacks, over their actions in the war.

Israel ignored an order from the U.N.’s top court to halt its military offensive in southern Gaza after South Africa accused Israel of genocide. Russia, too, has ignored the court’s call for it to end its invasion of Ukraine.

Hamas has also been investigated. Human Rights Watch released a report in July that concluded Hamas-led armed groups committed numerous war crimes during the attacks in Israel.

Hezbollah has been linked to numerous indiscriminate attacks on civilians over the years, including in Argentina, Bulgaria and, of course, Israel.

___

Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

The J.H. Allen Building sits kitty-corner from CHS Field in St. Paul’s Lowertown, where its nine-inch concrete floors and red brick exterior offer a glimpse into its turn-of-the-century origins as the site of a wholesale grocery and confectionary manufacturer. Constructed in 1905 by an associate of Minnesota State Capitol architect Cass Gilbert, the sturdy, six-story warehouse at Sixth and Wall Street was divided up for smaller tenants in 1920.

Pearson Candy left the Allen Building in 1965 and moved to West Seventh Street, followed by printing companies and other small-to-midsized manufacturers that have come and gone across the decades. Recent years have been less forgiving, with the Allen Building and other downtown structures sometimes hard-pressed to find office tenants in the modern era. Several floors now sit vacant.

But prospective new owners have entered the picture.

Global Commercial Real Estate Services, Inc. (Global CRES) — a subsidiary of Global Building, of Carlsbad, Calif. — has plans to buy 287 Sixth St. E. and use all the levels above the ground floor as a commercial storage facility.

The property is already zoned for businesses purposes, or “B5,” which allows for commercial storage to take up 15% of the gross floor area. Global CRES is seeking a variance from the city to convert 85% of the floor area to storage rental.

A hearing before the Board of Zoning Appeals is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Sept. 30.

Wide reactions

A call to building owner Tom Erickson was not immediately returned on Friday, but his attorney, Brian Alton, who on vacation, said in an email: “There are several floors that are empty. .. I have been told the leasing broker for the building is not able to secure new tenants. Storage would not be in lower level or first floor. Tenants leases would have to be honored according to their terms.”

On social media, Lowertown residents have expressed everything from relief to alarm. Residential neighbors have said the outside area needs better security and debated whether a storage company would provide it or prove to be more of an absentee landlord.

“Honestly, given the size of (Lowertown) apartments, some extra storage space so close would not be a bad thing,” wrote one resident on an online forum. “We need affordable housing,” wrote another. “It’s a prime candidate for anything and everything better, including residential conversion,” wrote yet another.

The Allen Building’s basement and ground level have drawn a variety of creative uses, including a small hard rock venue, the White Rock Lounge, which occupies a former School of Rock music studio around the corner from a gas station. Other lower-level tenants have included Empowered Percussion, a drum maker, the Lowertone recording studio and the organizers of the Twin Cities Jazz Fest. Upper floors have drawn small firms ranging in focus from engineering to healthcare.

“People are really wrestling with it’

A neighborhood organization, the downtown CapitolRiver Council, held a discussion about the commercial storage proposal before its Planning and Zoning Committee on Thursday morning, though the committee made no final recommendation around the variance request.

“People are really wrestling with it,” said Jon Fure, executive director of the CapitolRiver Council, in a brief interview Friday. He noted that the building has windows on only three sides, and most of the windows are situated above eyeball height, one of several elements that would likely complicate a conversion to residences or another dynamic use.

Historically, “it was used for storage,” Fure said. “That is what it was designed for. They used to stack boxes up to the window height.”

The surrounding Lowertown Historic District, which sits on the National Register of Historic Places, spans upwards of 40 buildings in a 16-block area. Given its lack of ornamentation and somewhat generic history, the Allen Building is officially designated a “supportive” structure within the district, neither “non-contributing” nor “pivotal.” As such, efforts to punch in new windows and make other adjustments could run up against historic preservation guidelines, depending upon their interpretation.

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