Liza Vannoy was walking into her home on Lookout Mountain last October when she heard her son scream.
She rushed to the field, where 12-year-old Camp was tending to their goats. She found a neighbor's dog, a pit bull mix, digging his teeth into the back of her son's leg. She pulled him off, she said, and as Camp climbed the fence, the dog bit down on her arm.
Vannoy yelled for help and tried to climb a wooden structure on her property. The dog yanked her back to the ground, she said.
"The power of his jaws were too great," she said.
She tried again, with a burst. Vannoy managed to free herself of the dog and climb. High enough for safety, she took stock of herself. Ten different wounds, she said. All of them painful. The dog's teeth dug into an artery.
"A tremendous amount of blood," Vannoy said Tuesday, recounting the event for Walker County Commissioner Shannon Whitfield. "I can't feel my arm [at the time]. I literally."
She paused.
"I don't even know it's attached."
She said the neighbor's dog was later put down. But afterward, she saw another one of their pit mixes roaming around. During a hearing at the LaFayette-Walker County Public Library, Vannoy proposed a couple of changes to how animal enforcement deals with wayward pets.
An animal lover herself - she said she and her husband have owned 41 since their wedding day - Vannoy said she has no problem with pit bulls or any other breed. But, she proposed, the county should require a license for certain dogs, the ones she believes have the strongest jaws. (The American Pit Bull Association says there is no meaningful scientific study comparing breeds' biting power, citing a University of Georgia professor who looked into the issue.)
She also said that animal control officers in the county should, in general, more aggressively enforce the current ordinances.
Whitfield welcomed Vannoy's ideas, as well as suggestions from dozens of other county residents Tuesday night. He held the meeting to gauge the temperature for tweaks to the county's animal control ordinances. One of his goals for his second year in office is to begin combing through all of the local government's rules and regulations, looking for areas for refinement.
About 85 people attended the meeting.
"It's very unique in any community to take on an issue this big and get this many people to come out and be part of the solution," he said. "We'd like to be able to use this model on other things within our ordinances and our codes that also need to be addressed."
Jeff Anderson, who lives in a rural part of Chickamauga, said his neighbor's dogs have terrorized him. They killed his chickens. They antagonized his own dogs, whom he keeps protected in cages. Anderson called the humane society, begging for advice on what to do. The person on the other line told him there was no leash law in the county.
Whitfield said this isn't technically true, but the law could be more specific. The ordinance says dog owners have to keep their animals under control.
"But it doesn't come out and use the word leash," he said.
Whitfield is also thinking about limiting the number of animals you can keep, depending on the size of your property. He said other communities have similar laws.
Kay Dean, of Villanow, advocated for more expensive punishments. In her old community in Ohio, officers wrote you a $150 ticket if you didn't have proof of a rabies vaccination for your dog. Whitfield added that violations of animal control ordinances currently wind up in Walker County State Court, but he wants to move them to magistrate court, where hearings could occur every day.
Dean said some neighbors let big dogs roam into her yard, to the point where she can't let her Yorkies or her blind Chihuahua outside. A man nearby came out with his own solution: Chase the dogs away with a broomstick. As for her and her house?
"We started shooting them with a paint ball gun," she said. "We're not very good at it."
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.