Charlie McDonnell had been playing out on Oakham Garth in Richmond Hill last Tuesday night when the tan and white dog - described by his mum as looking like a ‘pit bull’ – is said to have launched itself at the schoolboy.
The Richmond Hill Primary school pupil told the YEP how he tried to shake the animal off as it laid into his left leg.
But then the dog started ‘butting’ his lower limbs until he fell to the ground, and it began biting his left leg again.
Charlie said he escaped further injury by continuously kicking the ‘pet’.
The youngster, who had been playing with a friend and his older brother Sam, 13, said: “I was just scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t think it would come at me that fast.
“I didn’t think it would bit me. It was hurting a bit and it was butting me to get me on the floor and then I was just kicking.”
Mum Adele Britton, 38, who found her son lying on the grass outside her home, said the attack lasted only a few minutes, before the owner - who lives close by - dragged the dog away.
But Adele, who found Charlie on the floor outside her house, fears the mental scarring could last much longer.
She said: “If he hadn’t have had the presence of mind to keep kicking and kicking I don’t know how it would have turned out. If he hadn’t had that instinct...God know what was going through his mind.”
Charlie was taken by ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary where surgeons stitched up his torn left calf and other wounds in a two hour operation.
He is now back home, his leg bandaged, and on crutches.
A police spokesman said: “A 26-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with the incident and since released on bail. The dog involved has been seized and is being examined to establish its breed.”
* Last Thursday a Lakeland terrier cross was killed in a dog attack, also in the Richmond Hill area.
(Yorkshire Evening Post - June 11, 2013)
