Cory Fram is still in shock a day after being attacked by an off-leash dog in front of her Cunningham Drive home in south-end Barrie.
The 40-year-old mother of two told BarrieToday, a sister site of ThoroldToday, that she was outside her home having a cigarette on Thursday, Oct. 6 when she noticed a dog in the middle of the road.
“The dog had run by my house. He was on the road, not on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street. I hear footsteps at like 100 miles per hour… the guy is running down the sidewalk,” Fram said, adding she immediately thought the man had lost his dog.
Fram said she turned around, called out “puppy" and slapped her thigh to try to get the dog’s attention, at which point she said the dog turned around.
“I turned to the guy and with my arm I am pointing at the dog and saying ‘is this your dog?’ By the time I got the word dog out it bit my arm. I flung it off my arm and then it bit through the palm and the top of my hand,” she said.
Once she got the dog – which she described as possibly being a pit bull mix with black or dark brindle colouring – off of her, she attempted to get inside her home.
The dog bit her again.
“It bit my ass when I was trying to run to the house. I have a huge chunk of skin out of my butt and when I turned around to see if the owner was there the dog bit my finger. The guy grabbed the collar and was pulling, and it just shredded my finger.”
The attack was captured on her front porch security camera. (Warning: video is disturbing for some viewers.)
“It’s traumatizing,” she admitted of the incident, which sent her to hospital via ambulance with four bite wounds to her arms, hand and buttocks.
“I called 9-1-1 because I was actively bleeding and there’s still blood on my front porch and in my doorway and on the carpet. The dog got me good,” she said. “They don’t actually stitch dog bites because a dog’s saliva contains a ton of bacteria, and (the doctor) said if (he) stitched that closed, I’d end up with so many problems. I left the hospital with three of the four [wounds] actively bleeding.”
Fram said, as a dog owner herself, it’s not uncommon for people in the neigbourhood to notice other dogs, telling BarrieToday she has noticed this particular dog and the owner in the area before the attack. She doesn’t know if the dog was being walked off-leash or if it escaped a nearby home.
“I’ve seen (the dog) walked on a leash before, but it’s quite often off-leash. If you notice in the video, the dog had no leash attached to it and when the guy showed up to grab the dog, he had no leash in his hand,” she said.
She considers the attack unprovoked.
“You can see from the video that it’s not like I threw something at the dog or I attempted to grab it. None of that happened. This dog just bit me."
Fram told BarrieToday although the owner repeatedly apologized for the dog’s behaviour, he did not check to see if she was OK, nor did he return after securing the dog to check on her.
“He never came back and that is one of the most disturbing things and sends me into tears because he has no idea if I got bit through an artery or if I bled out on the floor. This guy just doesn’t care,” she said while choking back tears. “He needs to own up and take responsibility for what happened regardless of if it’s his dog or he's watching someone’s dog. We have to get that dog off the street and we have to get bad dog owners at bay because this is what happens. That could have been a child. It would have been fatal. If that was my child, they don’t fight like an adult does.”
A spokesperson for Barrie Police Service said they were advised of the incident late Thursday afternoon, noting the victim was advised to follow up and make a report with the City of Barrie bylaw department.
Fram said she and her husband, Kyle Fram, who was not home at the time of the attack, reported the incident to the city’s bylaw department on Friday morning.
“This morning they were going out to investigate,” said Kyle Fram. “We have some Facebook messages… and we provided those to them. They are trying to get the address and go pay him a visit. They’ve said if we’re as sure as we are that he’s in the area that they may just go door-to-door to weed him out.
"Once they find him, they said we have the option of pressing charges,” he said. “That’s the only way they can act on the owner or the dog … so we are definitely going to proceed with this because that dog can’t be given a second chance to get back out there in public again.”
(After this article was published, the Frams were informed by city bylaw officials that the dog has been removed from Barrie and is now in quarantine in Owen Sound.)
He is hoping by sharing publicly, the owner will choose to come forward on his own.
Kyle said the dog owner should reach out to Barrie police or bylaw to "get this over with before somebody else gets hurt."
