‘I watched our dog being killed’
Amy von Buddenbrocks, (23) of Durban North writes of the anguish of watching her family’s Collie cross German Shepherd mauled to death by two Pitbull Terriers and a Rottweiler.
At about 8:30am on Monday 12 May, I saw one of our neighbour’s dogs (Pitbull) on our property – I tried quickly to get the Pitbull off, while still being cautious as I know they are notoriously vicious. It was not long before the one dog was joined by another Pitbull and a massive Rottweiler. It was then that they attacked Bob.
Bob is a rescued dog and has been with us for 5 years. He is a medium sized dog, a collie cross German Shepherd who is extremely docile and loving. With the three dogs on him he didn’t have much chance but nevertheless, my gran (74), Kansile (55) and myself (23) tried to get the savage dogs off him using whatever we could around us. I had the hosepipe on the dogs while my gran used a stick to try get them off. We were all screaming for help, hoping the neighbours were home to come get their animals.
At this stage I ran inside to call the police, hoping they could help break up the fight. They directed me to the SPCA who also were not able to come because they said that the attacking dogs were not stray. Then another frantic call to the police who agreed to come help, yet they never arrived. It was not long until Bob’s yelping stopped. We realised he was dead, and our efforts had failed. The worst part for me was that after we realised he was dead, the dogs didn’t relent. They continued to drag Bob to the bottom of the garden where they mauled him for a further 20 minutes.
Although we still tried to get the trio off our dead dog, they were as focused as ever. It was only once our neighbour arrived home (from a call my gran had made earlier) that the dogs left our property. On arriving at the scene we shouted (now from inside our Trellidor because we were scared of the animals and Bob was now dead) to the neighbour to get his dogs off our property. He responded by saying “Don’t worry, they wont bite”. Quite ironic. The spouse then arrived at the scene, barely apologizing but rather saying: “I don’t know how this happened, they are not vicious dogs.”–My dad then had to go secure their fence temporarily and we are now further securing their fence by building a wall so that Marley (Bob’s sister) and Spike (Pug) never have to experience what Bob went through. It was a terrible day and my only hope is that Bob wasn’t in pain for too long.
