A five-year-old girl has been left scarred for life after she was attacked by an alsatian.
Abbie Varrow was jumping up and down on a trampoline close to a fence at a friend’s house when the dog leapt up from a neighbour’s garden and seized her face in its jaws.
The attack lasted a matter of seconds but it took surgeons two hours to close the wounds with 60 stitches. The nerves in her nose have been damaged.
Yesterday her mother Alyson said it was lucky Abbie and her friend had not been killed.
‘I dread to think what would have happened if the dog had got over the fence,’ said Mrs Varrow, 40.
'Very shaken up': Abbie Varrow back home with father Tony
The attack happened while Abbie was playing with her friend Harry Chapman, who lives close to her home in Great Notley, Essex.
Mrs Varrow said: ‘We heard Abbie screaming and then someone banging on the front door.
‘Under her left eye the bite had gone right through the flesh and we were amazed that she didn’t lose her eye. There was blood pouring from it.’
She added: ‘The first thing Abbie did at the hospital was ask for a mirror and when she looked she said, “Oh, it’s a mess, isn’t it?”
‘We just don’t know what will happen now and how well her skin will heal but we are concerned about her nose. She keeps saying it feels funny.’
The attack on March 27 left Abbie, whose parents have ten other children from previous relationships, in Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford for two days. She is due to return next month. Her father Tony, 39, a shop assistant, added: ‘It was a completely unprovoked attack.
‘Abbie was a regular five-year-old without fear but she now gets very upset if she sees bigger dogs.
‘She is very shaken up at the moment.
‘We don’t blame the dog but we 110 per cent blame the owners.
‘If they had been round to our house on their hands and knees apologising, then it would possibly make things better.
‘But they have done nothing and since then their kids have been seen out with another one of their dogs shouting at it to “kill, kill, kill”.
‘I want them brought to justice for what has happened.’
His wife called for a return to dog licensing, which was abolished in the UK in 1987.
Mrs Varrow said this would increase owners’ accountability and enhance other measures including microchipping and putting owners’ details on tags attached to the collar.
Essex Police said the alsatian’s owner had been arrested on suspicion of owning a dangerous dog.
(Daily Mail - April 5, 2012)
