Not First Attack
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May 24, 2005, DUBBO, NSW, AUSTRALIA -- The vicious dog which mauled a seven-year-old girl and her father in an unprovoked attack in their West Dubbo backyard had twice attacked its owner and had spent most of its life chained up.
Tiffany Scott went into her backyard late on Sunday afternoon to play when the neighbour's dog, a great dane-mastiff cross which had broken its chain and crawled under the fence, lunged at her.
"I turned around, but it ran and caught me," she said.
Her father Dennis Scott said he heard Tiffany scream, ran to the back door and saw his daughter clinging to a post on the back porch, with the dog clamped onto her leg. "The dog had her off the ground, tugging at her," he said. "He was pulling at her like a rag doll."
Tiffany sustained a 5cm long, 3cm wide and 2cm deep tear in her left calf, while her 40-year-old father received five puncture wounds to his left calf as he fought off the dog.
"I just pulled the dog off her, then I lost my balance and the dog got my leg," he said. "So I swung my leg over him and sat on him like a horse, and I wasn't getting off. I think I busted a few of his ribs."
Mr Scott called his neighbours over to help tie up the dog, while his wife Noeleen pulled Tiffany into the house.
"There was blood all the way through the house, into the kitchen and the bathroom, and that was from my daughter," Mr Scott said. "It was very messy."
The neighbours called an ambulance to the Yulong Street address and both Mr Scott and his daughter were transported to Dubbo Base Hospital where they underwent surgery overnight to repair tendon damage in their legs.
Mr Scott said his daughter, whose wound is far more serious, might require a skin graft in coming days. "She has to go back into theatre tomorrow," he said. "She's not in the best way."
Tiffany appeared somewhat recovered yesterday, but Mr Scott said the incident would leave some psychological scars. "She was pretty shaken up and scared," he said.
"She just kept repeating everything that had happened over and over. I think it's going to play havoc with us for a while, but hopefully she'll come around."
The dog was captured by council rangers and exterminated yesterday afternoon. Mr Scott said they couldn't have killed the animal soon enough. "I would have put it down then and there," he said.
"It should have been put down already - it's attacked its owners."
Alarmingly, Mr Scott said the owner of the dog had been severely bitten by the animal, and had showed him the scar to prove it. "He said to me: 'That dog got me once, too'," Mr Scott said.
He claimed the dog had been chained up in his neighbour's backyard "as long as he's had it".
"He's never home 'cause he went out to Narromine for a while and left both his dogs chained up," he said.
Mr Scott said he had only seen the dogs fed "twice in the last month."
"I reckon he was hungry," he said."Nothing was going to get in its way."
