Dog attack causes trauma

Station Hill resident suffers bad leg wound after unexpected incident

Three times a week, a Station Hill resident must walk past a dog that attacked her earlier this month. The attack left her out of pocket, with deep wounds in her leg, and with a fear that won’t go away.

Veronica, who has asked for her surname to be withheld, described the incident that happened on November 13. Speaking in Afrikaans, she said: “I walk past this house every day that I go to work.

“Usually I see a lady inside the yard, feeding the two dogs.

“But this morning (Talk of the Town spoke to her hours after the incident) she was with the dogs outside the fence instead of inside the yard.

“I wasn’t worried we have lots of dogs in our area and they don’t bite even the pitbulls here don’t just bite you. But next thing one of the two dogs started barking at me.

“I bent down to pretend I was picking up a rock to throw at it.”

Stray dogs often respond to that gesture by retreating, because some pedestrians do throw stones towards dogs that approach them aggressively.

“The lady shouted at me and told me to walk on,” Veronica said.

“But next thing one of the two dogs ran and bit my leg.”

TOTT saw the wounds made on Veronica’s leg (and took photographs).

“I went to the clinic and they said I have to go for injections for the next four weeks.

“You know, I’ve worked there for three years and this is the first time such a thing has happened. Here we have pitbulls at home and on the street and I’ve never been bitten.”

Along with the shock and trauma, it cost her at least a day’s pay (she is a daily paid employee).

“I’ve got no money today and I have debts to pay,” she said.

Veronica described the place where she was attacked, and the dogs that he said attacked her.

Talk of the Town visited the area and found her descriptions exactly matched two dogs, and the house whose yard they were in.

We provided a contact number for the owner to contact our reporter, in order to give their side of the story. They haven’t. But the point of this article is to remind residents of the harm that not controlling their pets can cause.

Remembering Zimkhitha Gaga

The incident described above occurred two weeks before the anniversary of the passing of Port Alfred resident Zimkhitha Gaga, after she was attacked by dogs in Alfred Road. She, too was walking to work. TOTT asked the police and Ndlambe Municipality for an update on the investigation into her death.

The police said the inquest was still under investigation.

Ndlambe Municipality responded as follows: “We have since tried to educate the public about our bylaws on owning dogs.

“Our bylaw officer is making sure that the public adhere to these bylaws. The incident referred to is under police investigation so we are unable to comment further than this. But we encourage the public to report any violation of bylaws.”

Why does your dog bite people?

Talk of the Town spoke to two experts for advice on understanding dogs’ behaviour, and preventing them from causing harm.

Veterinarian Dr Annie Mears said: “Dogs can be aggressive for many reasons. They can be nervous aggressive, reactively aggressive for proactively aggressive (which is much less common).

“Dogs, as pack animals, are used to establishing a territory and bond with certain animals and humans. This leads them to feel safe and makes them wonderful pets.

“If those bonds of territories are challenged in anyway, aggression can result. Dogs, like humans, can form memories and think and these memories are stored in the primitive reactive part of brain which is activated first to a stimuli before the thinking part of the brain.

“This is why both animals and humans can instinctively react to a situation new or one that reminds them of a past event without any further processing,” she said.

“An open gate or a change of boundaries may lead a dog to feel