A Scots pensioner today relived the horror of being savaged by a giant French Mastiff identical to the dog which starred in the Tom Hanks movie Turner and Hooch.
The fully-grown adult animal demolished its owner’s garden fence, ran along a footpath linking a row of terraced houses and lunged at Marion Whyte over her garden gate, a court heard.
The powerfully built beast sunk its teeth into the 70-year-old’s forearm, tearing off strips of her flesh and causing two large gashes and multiple puncture wounds.
The injuries have left the frail pensioner scarred for life.
The dog’s owner Helen Brown, from Livingston,West Lothian, was fined £240 and disqualified from owning or keeping dogs for five years after she pleaded guilty to allowing the Mastiff and another dog to be out of control.
The 42-year-old mum admitted at Livingston Sheriff Court that the animals had not been on a lead during the incident on 22 September 2019 and that one of them – the French Mastiff – had bitten Mrs Whyte to her severe injury and permanent disfigurement.
Mrs Whyte told how the two dogs had run along a footpath linking the row of terraced houses in Heatherbank, Ladywell, where she was tending to a litter of La-Chon puppies, “designer dogs” bred from a Bichon Frisé crossed with a Lhasa Apso.
As she bent forward to protect her tiny dogs in her front garden, she said the female Mastiff lunged at her and clamped its jaws around her right arm, sinking its teeth deep into her skin and tearing two strips out of her flesh as it savaged her.
She said: “I didn’t realise their dogs were out but mine started barking when they went out the door. I went to have a look and see what my dogs were barking at and I could see the two dogs knocking Helen’s almost broken fence over.
“They came running in a frenzy to my garden. The one that bit me was a really big adult bitch.
“I must have been quite close to the gate and as the dog ran past she grabbed my arm. It was funny because I didn’t realise I’d been bitten although I sort of went into shock.
“When I realised I had been bitten I called my niece Samantha, 30, and she came out and took me into the house. My son Ian, who is 40, picked up one of the puppy floor pads and wrapped it around my arm.
‘There wasn’t an awful lot of blood, it was just a gaping open wound. I told my husband ‘You’ve got to take me to hospital!’ His car was parked outside Helen’s and she was in her garden.
“I said to her: ‘Your dog has just ripped my arm open.’ She didn’t really say anything. She didn’t apologise then and she hasn’t apologised since.”
She said she was more worried about her six pups when she was attacked. She explained: “I put them out in the front garden to house train them and normally children come along and play with them.
"It’s just as well there were no children around that day.”
Mrs Whyte was treated with antibiotics at St John’s Hospital in Livingston and had an operation on her arm to cleanse and stitch the gaping wounds in her forearm back together .
Shortly after being released from hospital her arm turned red and started to swell up because the dog bites became infected and she had to return to accident and emergency for further treatment.
She was put on an antibiotic drip before having a second operation to treat the infection.
She described her arm as “a horrible mess” and said she had suffered permanent scarring and nerve damage as a result of the attack.
James Walker, defending Helen Brown, described the incident as “very unfortunate” and conceded that Mrs Whyte’s injuries were very serious.
He said: “Because my client is a responsible dog owner and recognises the dog’s behaviour was completely inappropriate, she has had the animal in question destroyed.
“This process has been very upsetting and particularly distressing for Mrs Brown’s family knowing her dog caused such harm to the complainer.
“She recognises the stresses and pressures she’s experienced are of little significance compared to the injuries of the complainer. The court has reparation and disqualification orders available.”
Passing sentence Sheriff Douglas Kinloch said a conviction under Section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 was a charge which carried the possibility of a custodial sentence.
He said he had limited the fine to GBP240 to take account of the accused’s restricted income, but made no mention of any compensation order in Mrs Whyte’s favour.
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