• Chantal Morgan and Jasper are both recovering from Tuesday’s mauling. Photo by Steve Grant.
THE mauling of a dog on Tuesday at Beeliar Regional Park has led to calls for Cockburn council to step up its ranger patrols.
Drawing on half-forgotten tales of shark-attack survivors, Chantal Morgan gouged the eyes of the dog that was tearing into her daughter’s 12-year-old staffy cross.
Jasper, who needs more than $1000 of surgery following the three-minute attack, was on a leash but the other dog was not.
“I have never been so scared in my life,” Ms Morgan told the Herald. “I really thought he was dead.”
The Bibra Lake woman is furious the other dog’s owner had allowed her three dogs to run through the park without a lead. Signs at the entrance, on the corner of Gwilliam Drive and North Lake Road, ask owners to leash their dogs because of environmental sensitivity.
Ms Morgan’s also astounded at how little help the other woman offered.
“I was kicking the brindle as well as the other two dogs, while pulling on the collar of the attacker with my right hand and holding the leash with my left,” she said.
“The woman finally approached with a tiny stick that she used on her dog with no effect.” That’s when Ms Morgan gouged the dog’s eyes.
“I knew it could turn on me, but there was so much noise with the other two dogs barking around my ankles, all I was thinking was ‘Jasper, Jasper’,” she said.
Ms Morgan says when the woman saw strips of flesh hanging from Jasper’s neck, she mumbled about her dog having never attacked anything before, then scarpered.
But she appears to be a regular: by coincidence the Chook was in nearby bush at the crack of dawn on the weekend and a woman fitting the description—mid-40s, long blondish hair—came by with three unleashed dogs. Another couple was also letting their dogs roam free. Just one gent had his rotty under control.
Ms Morgan wants a crackdown. “It’s a dieback area, so dogs should not be allowed to run around,” she says, adding bandicoots and other wildlife would have no hope of survival if attacked.
Jasper’s heading off to Queensland in August to join Ms Morgan’s daughter Tania.
Rangers are investigating.
by STEVE GRANT
