Mason was playing with two neighbor children in the driveway of his house, when a loose pitbull ran over and started attacking. The boy laid down on the ground and started screaming for help.
Thankfully, one of his neighbors, Grant Brown, 19, heard Mason’s cries from a few houses away and came to help.
“As soon as I noticed, I just ran over there without thinking and I didn’t know how, but I knew I had to get the dog off of the boy,” Brown told KPRC.
Brown charged at the dog, distracting the canine from its attack on Mason. Seizing the opportunity to get away, the 6-year-old ran inside.
“All I see is my son running up to me and he’s got his hand on his head and there blood coming down and everything,” Jillian Lindeman, the boy’s mother, said to KPRC.
Though Mason was rushed to the hospital, he will be OK. He was bitten on the back of the head, and needed several staples to fix the wound. He also has several bruises on his face.
Thankfully, Brown wasn’t badly hurt in the horrifying incident. The dog knocked him to the ground, giving him a cut to the hand.
“I looked back and my shoes came off,” Brown said. “I tripped and fell. The dog was on top of me before I knew it, and I knew I had to keep his mouth away from me.”
The dog has been surrendered to Montgomery County Animal Control, and its owner has been cited.
This is not the first pitbull attack in recent weeks. This Sunday, in Ceredo, West Virginia, a pitbull attacked a woman. According to Ceredo Police, the pitbull jumped a fence to attack the woman’s dog. When she got between the animals, the pitbull bit off her earlobe and also gave her several cuts on her face, arms and the back of her head. Ceredo has a “vicious dog” ordinance banning pitbulls in the city limits.
Pitbull advocates, however, say that the breed gets a bad reputation. Many blame the owners for improperly training their dogs, or even encouraging aggressive tendencies.
“It goes back to responsible pet ownership. It’s understanding the pet’s behavior, personality,” Jacob Rogers told WRAL. Rogers is a pitbull owner and fosters pitbulls through Carolina Adopt-A-Bulls.
A study from five doctors at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio found that pitbulls, mixed breeds and German shepherds were the most dangerous breeds, based on the frequency and severity of dog attacks. But one of the authors, Dr. Charles Elmaraghy, agrees that it comes down to the individual dog.
“We’re not trying to say that these dogs are overly aggressive. Usually there’s some level of provocation that lends itself to these dog bites,” Elmaraghy told WRAL.
