A young girl is “lucky to be alive” after being attacked by a stranger’s dog in the street.
Angel-Mae Dawson was playing outside her home with her eight-year-old brother and cousins when a German Shepherd appeared on the street in Stoke-on-Trent.
The animal grabbed hold of her legs and shook her several times before being scared off by the six-year-old’s mother’s screams.
Angel-Mae was rushed to hospital where doctors found she had suffered five puncture wounds on her legs and two on her back.
She also had severe bruising on her lower back and upper thigh from the attack and has since suffered panic attacks.
Dad Jack Dawson, 28, told StokeonTrentLive: “The dog went straight for my daughter.
“It went straight for one leg first, tried to incapacitate that one, and then went for the other one.
“It shook her about on the ground and then bit into her back. It looked like he’d gone for her spine. It was literally a few seconds but within a few seconds the dog had managed to do a lot of damage.
“Her mum had screamed with such a mother’s desperation. It scared the dog away. It shocked me.
“The first thing she could think of was to protect her daughter. She put her safety out of the window to save her.
“My daughter would not be alive today if it wasn’t for my partner saving her life. The only reason we still have a daughter is because of her.
“We were full of anxiety, my daughter was screaming, my wife was holding onto her.”
The parents bundled Angel-Mae into the car and rushed to the Royal Stoke University Hospital on Saturday.
They were told their daughter was at risk of infections and she should stay home from school for a week.
Jack says he has a message for other parents, adding: “Do not let your kids play out without you watching, for any reason. You never know what's going to happen.
"If we had not been in the garden and my wife hadn’t seen the dog come out, we would no longer have a daughter. I nearly lost my daughter to somebody’s dog.
“Just because there are dogs in the street, doesn’t mean they are friendly. People need to think that if their dogs are potentially vicious, they need to be muzzled, especially because kids can’t protect themselves.
“I love animals, I would wish for them all to have a lovely life. But if a dog is vicious enough to do as much damage as it did to my daughter, in such a short time, my honest opinion is that it should be terminated or at least put somewhere where it can be looked after, isolated away from children.”
