Dog Attack Trauma

March of 2025, my son (2 at the time), my mom, and me (30 now) went on a walk after having a family dinner on our dead end street. My son was on his balance bike, and we were walking right next to him. As we were approaching our direct neighbor’s house, their dogs were chained up in the front yard. As we were walking closer, we noticed the dogs barking, so we stopped. We were about to just turn around and go back home at that point. All of a sudden, one of the dogs (pitbull, bc I know people will ask) got off of its chain and began to approach us.

As it was walking towards us, my neighbor was like “oh, he’s not going to do anything.” Well, wrong. The dog got to us and looked at my son for a second before it snapped. He was able to get a small bite to the bridge of my sons nose —thankfully the handlebars on his bike saved a worse bite to the face— then I immediately picked my child up, and within the few minutes the dog got my child’s hip and then a BIG bite to his back. The deepest laceration being by his spine. Then lastly, the dog got ahold of my child’s pant leg.

At this point, my husband heard us screaming and ran out of the house. The dog was still latched onto the pats, but took off once it saw my husband running towards us. We were on the side of the ditch as well, and all I could think about was the fact we could fall and it would be over for my son and me.

Once the dog ran off, we made it safely into our home where I saw all of the bites/lacerations. We immediately went to the hospital via ambulance, the police took a report, and the dog was taken by animal control and euthanized.

My son is much more resilient than I’ve been in this situation, thankfully, and he has a really great therapist. Due to health insurance reasons, I haven’t had a therapist yet. Actually, had a phone call with a therapist today to set up an appointment for after my psych evaluation for our lawsuit.

I can’t even go outside in my front yard anymore, my head is always on a swivel, and I am TERRIFIED of dogs. It’s almost obsessive. I’ve become a helicopter mom when we’re out of our house, and we’ve even missed family events over this (due to family members having dogs.) We had to move our own dog into my mom’s house, because of my fears and fear of retaliation from these neighbors. It really sucks living next door to these people, and we’re planning on selling our house in the near future.

Anytime I tell anyone, I get the typical “it’s the owner, not the dog” lecture or “my dog would never even hurt a fly, sweetest ever” cool… it’s just not helpful.

Really, I just want to know if anyone else has been through something of this nature and there’s a light at the end of this never ending tunnel. I think the call with the therapist really got me in my head about it all day and I need some sort of outlet here.

Thanks for reading this long post if you’ve made it this far. 💙