A Melbourne woman who was attacked by dogs the day before the same pack mauled a mum pushing a pram, has opened up about her traumatic ordeal.
Late last month, three American staffy-like dogs attacked Christine, 71, in Sunbury, 40kms north-west of Melbourne’s CBD, knocking her to the ground, biting her face, legs and back and breaking her hip.
Shockingly, the same dogs were still roaming free the next day, when they savagely mauled the 35-year-old mother pushing her toddler in a pram, as they were on their way to pick up an older child from school.
Christine was saved by two men who pulled the dogs off her, but they too were injured by the animals in doing so.
Speaking out for the first time, Christine said after what happened to her, the second attack ‘should never have happened’ as the dogs should have been taken away.
She is still getting treatment at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, including skin graft surgery.
The three dogs were euthanised within hours of attacking the mum, but Christine said Hume City Council officials should have acted sooner.
‘It’s an unpleasant situation and it shouldn’t have happened,’ she told the Herald Sun.
‘I feel for the young lady who was attacked the day after, that should never have happened.’
She said the dogs should have been seized after they attacked her, which would have saved the mum from being savaged the following day.
‘I know how I felt when I was being attacked, but she had to protect her baby as well,’ she said.
‘That must have been heartbreaking for her.’
Christine spent 10 days in hospital after the ‘terrifying’ attack and said one of the ‘big bites’ she sustained ‘will take quite a long time to heal’.
‘They knocked me flying and I broke my hip so I couldn’t get up to go anywhere and they just had me on the ground,’ she said.
She thanked the ‘very good Samaritans’ who came to her rescue.
Christine said she wasn’t able to thank them at the time due to her injuries and shock, but hopes to meet them again so she can do so.
When the second attack happened, neighbours were alerted after hearing the mother’s screams, only to find her ‘bleeding from the head, the ears, the nose’.
Among those who came to the mother’s aid was the dogs’ owner who said she was ‘humiliated’ and ‘sorry’ for what her pets had done.
But she said she didn’t know about the previous day’s attack on Christine, otherwise she ‘would have kept (the dogs) inside’.
She told 7News that she had ‘put my body over the woman’ to try to stop the attack and was thankful they didn’t turn their attention to the infant.
‘It’s just been heartbreaking for me and I just pray for her,’ she said.
‘I am just so, so happy that the baby was OK… The dogs didn’t go near the baby, thank God.’
She also apologised to the local council and community over the incidents, saying her dogs ‘were my family’.
But neighbours said what happened was inevitable as the dogs constantly escaped from their backyard and had been terrorising them for months.
‘They’ve been reported many times,’ one man said. ‘They scare the hell out of you.’
At least five neighbours said they had complained to the council about the dogs, but nothing was ever done.
On one occasion, a neighbour was told they would have to restrain the dogs themselves before the rangers would come out to investigate.
Daily Mail has contacted Hume City Council for comment.