The most recent attack on Blanchard happened June 18 at 1515 Woodrow Drive, just blocks from Northeastern Elementary School on Kalamazoo's east side.
“Had it been a child -- that thought haunts me,” Blanchard said.
She was able to use her satchel to fend off the charging dog, and her adult strength to try to protect herself, she said. “I did get a hold on its collar or it would have been so much worse,” she said.
As it was, Blanchard was left with gashes on her face that would require more than 40 stitches to close, and puncture wounds on her left arm as well, before neighbors and the dog’s owner, who witnessed the attack, were able to pull the animal away.
Witnesses ran to help
Blanchard said she had just delivered a handful of packages to a resident at the corner of Woodrow and Gertrude streets, who signed for them and watched her walk away.
As she passed the vacant house next door and came around a hedge, she looked up from sorting the next batch of letters to see a male pit bull ”running at me with intent, growling with hackles raised."
She learned later the dog had just been returned to its owners after having been picked up for running loose.
“I put my satchel in front of me to block him and said firmly ‘No, go home,'” she recalled. But the dog kept coming, pulling her to the ground, grabbing her wide brimmed hat, and then going for her face.
She learned later that the dog was outside with its owner and had yanked the leash from his hand as she approached.
The dog was euthanized by animal control authorities following the attack.
Second time
It was not the first time Blanchard had been attacked on the job.
In August, 2010, she had been on her route on East Morrell Street in Otsego when she encountered a domestic squabble between a woman and her boyfriend; the woman had brought her dog with her as she removed items from the house they had once shared. As the two argued, the man caused the woman to drop the dog's leash. It then charged at Blanchard, slashing her ankle to the bone and biting her behind her knee.
That time she summoned 911 from her own Bluetooth telephone headset, she said. The couple was so intent on their own scuffle they failed to notice at first that she was under attack, Blanchard recalled.
In that case, she missed work for months, and is suing the dog’s owners.
This time, she is ending her tenure as a letter carrier, work she has done for eight years. “My heart can’t take it,” Blanchard said.
She began training Tuesday for supervisory work, with her manager, Jon Scott's, blessing.
(MLive - June 27, 2012)
