Not the Best Way to Meet Your Neighbors

**Warning: This post contains a disturbing description of one dog attacking another**

There's a woman in my neighborhood who I have often seen walking two small while dogs. Up until yesterday, I never knew her name, or where in my neighborhood she lives. That has since changed.

Yesterday afternoon I came home from church, and was pulling up to the curb in front of my house. I saw this neighbor, D, walking past me with her little dogs on their leash. I didn't think anything of it until a second later when I heard horrible screaming. I was still in my car, and in my rear-view mirror I saw a very large rottweiler - that had apparently escaped from his fenced-in yard two houses down - with one of these little white dogs in his mouth, shaking it back and forth like a rag doll. D is screaming, trying to pull on the leash to free her dog..some other neighbors that had been on their front porch are screaming and running towards the scene..the owner of the rottweiler is running out, pulling his dog off the little one. I jumped out of my car and just stood there in a moment of shock of what I'm seeing happen. It was horrible.

Neighbors come running from all over - the screaming from D and the other neighbor couldn't go unnoticed. Somehow the owner of the rottweiler gets his dog off and hauls him away. Meanwhile, another neighbor gets a towel  to wrap around D's little dog, which is horribly injured. Another neighbor and I are wondering who we can call, and I just call 911 - not knowing what else to do. 911 patches me through to the Humane Society, and finally between several calls that I and my neighbor are making, we realize that 1) there is no such thing as an animal ambulance that is going to come help this little dog and 2) not many animal hospitals are open on Sunday afternoon. We finally get the phone number/address for a place about a 20 minute drive away.

While my neighbor and I are making these calls, other neighbors are kneeling on the sidewalk with D as they try to keep the little dog wrapped in the towel and pinned down so he wouldn't move and make his injuries worse. Kudos to my neighbor J, who I've known is a Christian, for praying over D and her little dog and just being a calming voice in the madness of the scene.

We realized we need to get this little dog to the animal hospital pronto...by this time it's been about 10 - 15 minutes since the attack. D was in no shape to drive, and someone had to hold on to the dog to keep him as still as possible, so I offered to drive her. Just as we were getting her and her dog and into the back of my car, the police show up. I had given them my address when I called 911. They questioned us for a minute to find out what happened, but then let us go so we could get on the road to the animal hospital. When we pulled away, they were talking to the owner of the rottweiler. (I found out later that the rottweiler, although he had broken out of his fence before, had never attacked another animal before. I also found out that after D and I left, the owner of the rottweiler had to be taken to the hospital because he was experiencing chest pains - perhaps from the stress of the situation?)

I punched in the address to the animal hospital into my phone's GPS (so thankful for having that feature!) and drove off. Talk about nerve-wracking, driving down the freeway with D and her dying dog in my backseat, just praying that I'll be able to find the animal hospital and that God would bring peace and comfort to this situation.

We got to the animal hospital, and they quickly took the little dog and D back. About 30 minutes later D came back out to the waiting room, saying they had to put him to sleep. His injuries were just too extensive, he was old (14 years), and his blood pressure had dropped so much that he wouldn't have survived the surgery. While we were waiting for the vet to finish up a report for D, she and I had a little cry there in the waiting room, and I found out that the two little dogs were litter-mates, and that she had had them since they were puppies.

I took D home, and we updated the neighbors on what happened with the dog. She was very appreciative of everyone's help, but I think we all just felt so terrible about what happened. I don't know what's happening to the rottweiler...but I hope he's euthanized. I know rottweilers can be gentle, good dogs, but an incident like this is too much. What if he had suddenly decided to attack a child? My heart just about stops just thinking about it.

I'm proud of the way that the neighbors all came out quickly to help when someone was in obvious distress. I wish I had met D under better circumstances, as she is a really kind woman.