At 13 years old, Levi Perkins has always had a dog at home.
But she’s a lot more cautious around the animals after being badly bitten by a friend’s dog during a visit to a Dover home on Sept. 27.
“She’s wonderful with animals,” said Levi’s mother Samantha Perkins. “I can’t imagine there’s anything she had done to provoke the incident. That’s why I’m so concerned.”
Levi said her friend told her to open the back door while she held one of her dogs, which she was told was excitable. The Mastiff-Staffordshire Terrier got free when Levi couldn’t open the door on her own.
“It was sniffing me and jumping up on me,” said Levi. “I didn’t think that it was going to bite me.”
The teen was bandaged up by her friend’s parent and taken to hospital. She needed thirteen stitches to repair the wound.
“It hurt a lot. It was like nine out of 10,” Levi said.
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While she still doesn’t have feeling in part of her arm, her injury is healing.
In a statement on Tuesday, the City of Calgary’s Bylaw Services said that the investigation was ongoing and the dog had not been seized.
“Seizure of any dog is done on a case-by-case situation and factors we look at are as follows: public safety, location of incident, past history, bite severity, etc,” the statement said.
“The city takes all bites seriously and a full investigation will be carried out in every case with fines up to a maximum of $10,000 for every offence.”
Levi’s mom isn’t saying she wants the dog put down, but she wants to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
“I think they’ll potentially get fined which really doesn’t help the dog rehabilitate and or protect the community,” said Samantha. “Fines are not really important. I’m not trying to hurt a dog owner.”
The dog’s owner wouldn’t comment to Global News but, according to Samantha, the owner told her there hadn’t been problems with the pet before and they would consider kenneling it when people visited in the future.
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