As soon as he opened the door, the 100-pound mastiff-pit bull ran at him. There was no escape. It bared its teeth and clamped onto his hand, then his arm, and finally his thigh, ripping it wide open.
“I was punching him, but he would not get off me,” Robbie remembered. “I thought I was going to die.”
The dog’s owner was able to pull the animal off Robbie, but not before it mauled him in the April 24 attack in Haverhill. It took hundreds of stitches and multiple surgeries during Robbie’s 12-day stay at Massachusetts General Hospital to help his body begin to heal.
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| Robbie Stickney Jr. |
The incident was the worst of several dog attacks this year that compelled Haverhill to toughen its animal control laws.
Two months later, Robbie’s body is healing, but the emotional scars still run deep, his grandmother said. He needed counseling to deal with nightmares that haunted him for weeks after the attack.
Little things can bring back the fear. He is sensitive to the sound of a dog barking. When his own dog, an Akita-German shepherd mix named Sam, happened to bark one day, Robbie winced.
“I got really scared,” he said.
The attack on Robbie happened without warning on a Thursday afternoon.
Robbie was waiting in a van outside the apartment at 44 High Street where his dad's girlfriend's parents lived. In the van with him was his dad's girlfriend and her dad.
Robbie said his dad’s girlfriend was getting out of the van and somehow injured her fingers in the van’s door, then went upstairs to tend to the injury. Robbie said that after a short time, the girlfriend’s father told him to go upstairs to see how she was doing, so he walked to the apartment.
“When I opened the door (to the apartment) their dog barked at me, so I ran downstairs,” Robbie said. “The dog chased me and ... he got me.”
The dog cornered Robbie in the hallway, and its jaws clamped down on his left hand, causing him to scream out in pain. The bite caused several puncture wounds, and he began to bleed.
Next, the dog tore into his left elbow, and then bit down hard on his left thigh, causing a wound so pronounced that Robbie still wears a large bandage as he waits for it to heal.
The woman who owns the dog — the mother of Robbie’s father’s girlfriend — ran to Robbie and pulled the dog off him. The girlfriend called 911, and within minutes Robbie was in an ambulance and on his way to Massachusetts General Hospital.
“On my ride to Boston they gave me painkillers, a mask to breathe and they bandaged me,” Robbie said.
During his stay in the hospital, the deep wound to his left leg required five surgeries.
“The surgeries didn’t actually hurt because I was asleep,” Robbie said. “They gave me morphine.”
He needed 200 stitches in the area of his left elbow, but his leg was ripped open so badly that it couldn’t be stitched up. It has remained an open wound that doctors are still trying to get to heal.
After almost two weeks in the hospital, Robbie was able to return to Silver Hill Elementary School in Haverhill, where he is in the fifth grade. The school year ends Tuesday, but as summer sets in, he won’t be able to join the other kids for a dip in the pool.
“The only thing I can’t do is swim, or else I could get an infection in my leg,” he said.
Joffre said her grandson’s leg injury requires a change of dressing every night, and he’ll continue to see doctors until the wound is completely healed.
“Robbie needs to be cared for and supported by everyone,” she said.
He is expected to have permanent scarring on his leg, but otherwise should make a full recovery once the leg heals.
The dog was killed several days after the attack, and the owner fined $150 by the city. The owner agreed to have police destroy the animal because of the severity of the attack.
DANGEROUS DOG LAWS
In the aftermath of the incident, the City Council approved several changes to Haverhill’s dog laws. They included giving police the ability to declare a dog dangerous or vicious and requiring owners to post warning signs on their property.
Owners of dangerous dogs must muzzle or restrain their dogs if out in public, they must have an insurance policy and they are required to pay a surcharge in addition to the regular dog licensing fee.
The new laws also call for the creation of a Dog Attack Prevention Commission that will compile and maintain data on dog bites and attacks and make recommendations to the mayor and City Council.
(Eagle Tribune - June 15, 2008)
