'Frightening experience': warning for dog owners after attack

A man has used his body weight to pin a frenzied dog to the ground after it tried to attack his wife and the family dog on the weekend.

Lisa Hickman and her eight-year-old daughter, Maya, had been walking on a path between Allonga Street and Aruma Place, Currimundi, with Japanese spitz Yuki on a leash when the attack happened about 8am on Saturday.

Ms Hickman said the dog, an American staffordshire terrier, ran from behind and grabbed and shook Yuki, before turning on her when she tried to get it to get it to release her dog.

“They say if a dog is attacked you need to not get involved, but when it’s your dog that’s not an option,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to stand there and let my eight-year-old watch our dog get killed.

“It’s (a case of) how do you sustain the least amount of damage by getting involved?”

Neighbour Tim Byrne, who was in his yard at the time, ran to help.

“I grabbed the white dog and held it up in the air and then the dog focused on me and lunged at me. I was able to kick it several times,” he said.

“I was worried the little girl was going to be next.”

Ms Hickman’s husband, Mike Walker, also heard the noise and ran into the fray, pinning the dog down with his knees on its upper back and splaying its forelegs to push its face to the ground.

“It was trying to bite my hands but it couldn’t get to them properly,” he said.

Mr Walker and Ms Hickman dread to think what might have happened if their daughter had been walking the family dog on her own.

The dog was leashed by one of its owners and taken away.

Sunshine Coast Council is investigating the incident. It is understood the council has requested proof of the dog’s euthanasia.

Ms Hickman spent most of Saturday at Sunshine Coast University Hospital, where she had x-rays and antibiotics for bite wounds. She also sustained a slipped disc during the attack.

Yuki required veterinary treatment for puncture wounds.

Ms Hickman said she did not want the incident to result in a “witch hunt” against the dog’s owners, and she and Mr Walker said they were content for the council to handle the matter.

“It was a rescue dog which they took on without knowing that it had bevavioural – (past) trauma – issues,” Mr Walker said.

“They tried for a while to make it good. They tried to keep it contained in the house.”

Mr Walker understands the dog had been inside its owner’s house when it pushed open a door that was not properly latched and escaped the yard through an automatic sliding gate that was yet to fully close after someone drove in.

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Mr Walker and Ms Hickman said it was difficult to know how best to stop a dog attack in progress.

Danielle Huston, clinical director at Animal Emergency Service, Tanawha, said water could sometimes be used to break up a fight but it was difficult when a dog was in that state of mind.

Stephen Dawson, a dog trainer of 40 years, said the most effective method of preventing an aggressive dog from attacking was to keep it contained, preferably in its own enclosure, so that it could not escape its yard when someone opened a gate.

Councillor Terry Landsberg, who lives nearby and was on the scene within minutes, said the incident highlighted the need for dogs, particularly those with a history of aggression, to be appropriately contained.

“It’s obviously a frightening experience for a local resident to be walking her dog around the neighbourhood and to experience that, and this is one of the reasons why council are making sure dog owners do the right thing,” he said.

The state government has introduced tougher penalties for dogs not under control or that attack.

The penalty for a dog not under effective control in a public place has risen to $806. Owners can be fined up to $108,000 and jailed for up to three years if their dog is involved in an attack that causes death or serious injury.