Fiona Borders, who owns five whippet-Staffordshire bull terrier cross breeds, admitted being involved in Thursday’s mauling that left a dog walker traumatized and needing hospital treatment for a bite.
But the 76-year-old, from Brechin, blamed the other dog owner, and denied being the same person at the center of an incident involving four Staffies the previous week.
Police linked the attacks, in Montrose and Brechin, when they appealed for information this week.
The Record spoke to the victim in the second incident before tracking down Borders, who claimed she was the dog owner involved.
She insisted the man who was bitten brought the trouble on himself by panicking when her dogs approached him.
She said: “They’re not vicious pups but the man was hysterical. He’d picked his dog up in his arms and was kicking and swinging at my dogs. If he’d stood still, everything would have been fine.”
Borders maintained that the other dog owner’s reaction provoked the mother of her four pups.
She said: “The mother might have bitten his hand because he was kicking at her pups and they were squealing. She broke out of the car, the handle of the lead broke and she got away.”
But Borders’s recollection of the incident is very different to the male victim, who asked not to be named.
The 69-year-old needed hospital treatment to a wound in his right hand after the incident in Brechin.
The man said he was walking his spaniel on a lead when the pit bulls pounced “out of the blue”.
He said: “It was terrifying. They appeared very suddenly from under a hedge. I think they’d just jumped out of the boot of a car.
“They almost immediately started to attack my dog. They were biting his ears, legs and tail. I picked him up and started heading towards some nearby houses for safety.”
He added: “The pack followed me into the gardens. I tripped and they pounced on my dog. I picked him up again and tried about six or seven houses before a friend let me in. It was then I realized I’d been badly bitten.”
Police said the attack mirrored an incident in Montrose on February 3 when a 71-year-old man and his dog were targeted by four Staffie-like dogs. But Borders categorically denied being involved in the first attack, insisting she has never walked her dogs in Montrose.
Last night, police said they were following “positive lines of inquiry”.
(Daily Mail - Feb 15, 2014)
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