As two little girls recover from being bitten in the face by a pair of bulldogs who lived next door, family, friends and animal experts are trying to understand what triggered the attack.
“I have never, ever seen the dogs do anything like what they did,” said Loretta Blanchett, a close family friend who has helped raise the girls and who saw the attack.
Sarah Keaton, 6, is at home after receiving stitches near the corner of her eye, Blanchett said. On Thursday, her sister, 5-year-old Autumn Avery, was having reconstructive surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Erlanger after one of the dogs tore a flap out of her cheek.
Blanchett and the girls were walking next door at dusk Wednesday to visit the couple next door. Blanchett said the neighbors, with whom they are close friends, had just let out two of the family’s dogs – an English bulldog and an American-English bulldog mix.
Blanchett said the dogs ran up to the edge of the property and started barking.
“Sarah got startled and started screaming,” Blanchett said. “And then they just jumped on her.”
Blanchett said she and the next-door couple lunged between the dogs and Sarah. The two dogs then tackled Autumn, biting her face, she said.
The dogs are being quarantined for 10 days at Wolftever Pet Wellness Center to check for rabies, said officials with the Humane Educational Society of Chattanooga. After the quarantine period is up, it will be up to the owners to decide how to proceed.
Blanchett said the owners told her they plan to euthanize the dogs.
No charges have been filed in connection with the incident, officials said.
Humane Society Executive Director Guy Bilyeu said it’s nearly impossible to determine what set the dogs off.
“It could be that the dogs reacted to the screaming,” he said. “We just can’t tell what the situation looked like from the dogs’ angle.”
He also noted that the dogs’ aggression can’t be blamed on their breed.
“Bulldogs are definitely not the dogs that bite most. But when they do they are more powerful, and scarier,” he said.
The Humane Society rarely deals with serious biting incidents, Bilyeu said, and bites to the face happen only once or twice a year.
Blanchett said she places no blame on the neighbors.
“They always kept the dogs penned until dusk, after they knew the girls were usually heading to bed,” she said. “It was just a combination of events that led to something really awful.
“There’s no animosity between us,” Blanchett said. “When I saw [the wife] today, we hugged each other and told each other we were so, so sorry.”