Nine-year-old Cheyenne Golan was bit Tuesday while riding her bike on her street in Robersonville. Her injuries were not serious.
Martin County Manager David Bone says the dog's owner will have strict guidelines she'll have to follow once she gets her dog back, but the Golan's aren't satisfied. They say after the dog bit their daughter, they feel it should have been euthanized.
Cheyenne says she was riding her bike when she was attacked. She says, "As soon as I pulled up and started riding up, it stopped and started coming towards Maggie, and then came around and bit me."
Maggie Knight is the owner of the 80-pound husky-terrier mix and is set to get the dog back from the the Martin County animal shelter.
Bone says the county weighs a lot of factors before letting a dog return home. He says, "First and foremost we have public safety welfare. That's definitely a concern. We also have to balance that out with the rights of the dog owner."
The Robersonville Police Department says Knight is charged with allowing a dangerous dog to go beyond the owner's property without proper restraint.
By next Friday, August 16th, she can pick up the dog, if she meets the proper guidelines: the dog must be inside at all times, in an enclosed pen, or have a muzzle and a leash. A sign warning of a potentially dangerous dog must also be shown at the home.
But Cheyenne's father Mark isn't sold on the idea of the dog returning to the neighborhood. He says, "That's still not a full-proof guarantee that she's not going to get attacked. All we can do is just hope that it doesn't happen. If a dog bites somebody, it should be euthanized. Especially in a situation like this."
Bone says part of the criteria for determining whether a dog is euthanized or returned is the extent of the injuries from the attack. He says broken bones, disfiguring lacerations or other serious injuries most likely would have resulted in the dog being put down, but says those kind of injuries did not happen in this case.
(WITN - Aug 9, 2013)
