School girl loses foot to pet dog in attack

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
1/17/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Says he is bound and determined to keep smiling through her ordeal

Ten-year-old Milly-Anne Hemley had to have her foot amputated after she was savagely attacked by her own pet dog. In spite of her horrific ordeal, she's vowing to keep her brave face on and keep smiling.

'Everyone calls me a little soldier and everyone says I'm brave - I don't feel brave, I just get on with it and keep smiling,' Milly-Anne Hemley said.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Milly-Anne's Staffordshire bull terrier, attacked her out of the blue one day. Surgeons did the best they could - but eventually they had to remove her foot and the lower part of her right leg.

Milly-Anne spent Christmas in the hospital following the attack at her home in Northamptonshire. Learning how to walk on crutches, she refuses to feel sorry for herself.

"Everyone calls me a little soldier and everyone says I'm brave - I don't feel brave, I just get on with it and keep smiling," she said.

In the attack, her dog attempted to bolt out of the house in Long Buckby when the front door was left open. The family pet latched on to her leg and didn't let go.

"I remember my whole body shaking, I was hugging his back and saying: 'It's only me, Rory,'" she told reporters.

Milly-Anne's brother eventually managed to pull his sister away from the dog and shut her in the living room for safety. Rory attacked a second time; this time biting the little girl's other leg.

She was rushed to hospital where surgeons battled for two hours to save the young girl's damaged limb. Her injuries were too severe and her mother Paula Warren was asked to give her permission to amputate.

Milly-Ann's 32-year-old mom was at work at the time of the incident and had left son Braydon, 15, the eldest of her four children, in charge in her absence.

She now says she blames herself for not being there when the dog attacked her daughter, described her horror upon seeing the damage to Milly-Anne's leg in the wake of the incident on December 19.

"It was just gone, it was just a piece of bone," she said.

Mrs. Warren says that the dog, which has since been destroyed, had never shown any signs of aggression before the shock attack just days before Christmas.

Milly-Anne will be fitted with a prosthetic limb when her leg is fully healed.

She has kept a diary of her recovery on Facebook and even has a new pet, a kitten she has named Jazz.

� 2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Dog attack, amputation, United Kingdom, self pity, Facebook

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1 - 5 of 5 Comments

luis
4 months ago
I hope pitbull owners wake up to the reality that these dogs should be banned and eventually completely erradicated. How many times do we need to hear of these maulings and killings. A lot of people do put animal rights above the rights of humans. That is just morally wrong.
SBTLover
4 months ago
Staffordshire Bull Terriers are one of only two breeds to have their love and tolerance of children mentioned in the breed standard. They are also extremely uncommon in the US. I HIGHLY doubt the dog was actually a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, it was probably a Pit Bull misidentified as a Stafford. People often try to give their Pit Bulls a better name by falsly claiming that they are SBTs. As the owner of an SBT (who passed the ATTS and the CGC on his first try) from a reputable breeder, I find this trend disturbing and dangerous for my beloved breed.
Lisbeth van Duyvenvoorde
4 months ago
I hope Church officials will put their weight behind the right of towns to ban dog breeds if they so choose. This Christie Counts has two pit bull derivatives (BULL mastiffs or BoerBULLS). It's no wonder she would like her dogs to be put above the safety of the children in our communities. I'm saddened by the way politicians are putting aggressive breed dogs above our sacred and precious children. I hope the Church will choose a different, better way. Thank you.
Jaloney
4 months ago
Breed Bans are the way to go. They drastically reduce the cost of animal control over time, as the need to euthanize overbred pitbulls goes down overtime. In addition, areas with long time bans experience more stable property values, and a reduction of gang-related violence. PETA and many other advocacy groups also point out that breed bans protect people from the much more savage and life-threatening nature of a pitbull attack and protect the dogs from humans that breed the dog for dog fighting. Remember that Hollywood promoted cigarettes for decades, until the government outlawed the activity. Just because some t.v. personalities on UNreality t.v. promote pitbulls doesn't mean the dogs are safe. Unfortunately, very wealthy dog fighers united across the world put a lot of money into the pitbull propaganda machine because promoting the dogs in family homes makes hiding their bloody sport in plain sight becomes very easy. Pitbulls were bred for evil. Evil begets evil. It is not all in how you raise them. All dogs get equal chances of being chosen by good or bad owners. Pitbulls do not adapt to life with humans and the animals latent dog fightng genes cannot be seen, and once they are triggered, only a gun stops their attacks. The sacrifice of life and limb to the pitbull cult in 2013 must stop. Church groups need to get organized and vocal to stop the random mauling of innocent people. Most pitbull victims are not covered by any insurance, and they are often left to beg on the internet to pay for plastic surgeries. Parents of children killed by pitbulls are ignored. They do get the sympathy of our nation or visits from the president. Love thy neighbor. Don't own a pitbull and start fighiting to ban them before a loved one is mauled.
Debbie Bell
4 months ago
Sadly, this dear girl's injuries were the work of a "good" pit bull. Attacking for no reason, without warning, immediately doing damage, not letting the vicitm leave, these are all traits intentionally created in the fighting dogs. Pits are the best at this behavior. Proof is that with countless dog breed//type combinations, essentially all US dog fighters, the "kill or die trying type" use only pits. Your pit might not be a good pit (yet), but if he is, he will not give warning or need a reason to attack.

Most dogs bite to guard a resource or to make an intruder leave. They often bark and rush, then retreat, as their goal is to make the other leave, so they let the other leave. They want to avoid a confrontation. If they do bite, most immediately release. If the other submits/yelps, is down, the biting stops. These normal dog behaviors "ruined a dog fight", so the cruel creators of the fighing dogs selected dogs who were not normal. Dogs who did not fight "well" were labeled worthless curs and were killed. Empirical evidence is that they feel good while mauling, as endorphins and adrenalin flow during a fight. This is why they continue mauling even while suffering severe injury themselves.

Dogs more than any other species were selectively changed by man for different "jobs". The job of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Pit Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier was to kill other dogs for no reason. They do not need training or abuse to make them act on instinct, any more than you need to train or abuse a beagle to make him sniff, bark an d chase rabbits.. Training may modify behavior, but instinct is inside, invisible and it is impossible to know when it may surface and guide a dog's behavior.
Ban pit breeding and sale. Enact and enforce spay/neuter microchipping of all pits, pit mixes, all dog-aggressvie dogs. The fact that cruel dog fighters created the pit bull is NOT sufficient reason to continue breeding more of them. Let them mercifully become extinct. Everyone sane and compasionate wins. All dogs win, especially the mutant pit bulls themselves.

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