In a normal year there are around three fatalities from dog attacks; this year there have been nine. What has happened – and can anything be done?
On a normal morning on a normal walk to school in Ramsgate, east Kent, Sophie and her three children saw their neighbour and his dog on the street and stopped to chat. “The kids pet the dog, everything’s normally fine,” she says. “And it all seemed fine the day it happened – there were no warning signs. I said: ‘Right, come on, we’ve got to get to school because we’re going to end up being late.’” Her seven-year-old son, Louis, gave the dog – a St Bernard and Japanese akita cross – one last stroke on its back, then the dog turned around, sank its jaws into his face and pinned him to the floor.
She and the owner grabbed the dog. Her other two children ran off in panic, a man came running out of a nearby business with a first-aid kit thinking there had been a car accident because of all the screaming, and Sophie held her son’s face to her chest to try to stop the bleeding. A paramedic car arrived and took Louis to a nearby park, from where he was airlifted to hospital, and into surgery. The dog, says Sophie, “had punctured straight through his top lip, and through his gums. It went through one side of his nostril.” On the other side, Louis had a 5cm laceration along his jaw. “The surgeon said if the dog had got him a little lower, we would have lost him. It was right next to his jugular.” Louis’s skin was pieced back together, and has healed well, says Sophie, although there is scarring. “It’s a constant reminder whenever you look at him.”
