Victim snarls after dog attack

A 69-year-old Coeur d’Alene woman who was attacked by three dogs in The Landings is wondering why city ordinances don’t require the dogs be removed before they bite someone else.

Millie Neville said she and her small Shih Tzu mix were out for a walk Wednesday evening on Bardell Drive when they were attacked by her neighbor’s three large dogs.

The dogs included a pitbull and two mixed breeds, she said. They knocked her down and almost killed her pet, which is recovering at a local veterinarian’s.

“I thought he was dead, and they apparently did too because they dropped him,” Neville said. “He was limp.”

The three dogs stormed out of a fenced residential yard as Neville and her dog walked by. Fearing for her dog’s safety, she picked it up, but the attacking dogs lept and ripped the Shih Tzu from her arms, knocking Neville to the ground, she said.

Another neighbor who came to assist was bitten in the leg, she said.

City Code enforcement officers cited the dog owner but did not require the three dogs to be removed from the neighborhood despite the danger they present to others, she said.

“They are calling the dogs dangerous,” she said.

City code labels dogs dangerous after one biting incident, essentially giving the dogs a second chance. A second biting incident requires the vicious animals be removed.

Coeur d’Alene Police Officer Mario Rios said the dog owner, who wasn’t named, received six citations. The citations included one citation each for dogs at large, and for biting.

Total fines amount to $375, he said.

Neville wondered why the attack on her and her Shih Tzu-poodle mix, and the additional attack on her neighbor, constitute one incident instead of two.

She thinks the dogs are a danger to others and should be removed.

Rios, however, said the attacks were part of the same episode.

“This was all one place, one time, one incident,” Rios said.

Neville said her small dog suffered lacerations, punctures, eye injury and injured vertebrae from being shaken by the neck.

“He’s still holding on,” she said.

It is the dog’s birthday next month, said Neville, “if he makes it that long.”

Biting dogs are relatively uncommon in the city, said Rios. Patrol officers carry updated sheets letting patrolmen know where dangerous dogs live.

“There are not a lot of dogs within the city in that category,” he said.

Rios said Neville does have the option of filing a lawsuit for damages against the neighbor.