OPINION|
Deanna Giles, 71, expected to live the rest of her life debt-free. That changed at 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 5, when she was bitten by a loose dog in the Woodland Heights neighborhood.
“I was bleeding so badly that I was concerned about stopping the bleeding,” she says.
Her medical insurance is through Medicare; Giles cannot afford supplemental insurance. Her sole income is through Social Security.
The dog bit her three times and then ran off, with its owner still chasing it.
Giles says her medical bills total in the thousands of dollars. Medicare does not pay for everything, she says.
Those bills include doctor visits and a series of five rabies shots. The dog, a 1-year-old named Zeus, had not been vaccinated.
Giles does not yet know how much she will pay of the $3,000 bill for the ambulance that responded and took her to Mercy Hospital, where she spent five hours.
The owner of the dog lives a few blocks from Giles. I talked to her on Wednesday, after interviewing Giles.
“I am so sorry she got bit,” Katrina Jungers says.
She tells me her dog somehow escaped from her fenced yard.
The next day I searched Case.Net, the state's online database for courts, and saw that Jungers was ticketed the day of the incident for having an animal at large. She has a Sept. 7 court date.
Springfield-Greene County Animal Control had ordered that Zeus be quarantined at home for 10 days after the incident.
I also discovered Jungers was ticketed for having an animal at large Oct. 7, 2021. She pleaded guilty and paid a $50.50 fine. This incident would have been before Zeus was born.
‘I was afraid she was going to bleed to death'
Tasha Baker lives near where Giles was bitten. Baker rushed from her home to help.
“Bless her heart, she was gushing blood,” Baker tells me. “I was afraid she was going to bleed to death.”
Baker tells me — just as she told the animal control officer who responded — that the dog had bitten her around the time it bit Giles.
Zeus' bite did not break Baker's skin but left a bruise, Baker says.
Baker saw the owner and another woman trying to catch the dog. Baker stepped out into her front yard to help, offering a leash.
“I thought it was a sweet pup,” Baker says. “But then it bit me in the rear and I said (to the owner,) ‘You are on your own, sweetheart.'
“They were allowed to keep the animal, which I did not understand because they had two incidents the same day.
“It could have killed that old woman,” Baker says.
Stray dogs can be found throughout neighborhood
Becky Volz says stray dogs are a problem throughout Woodland Heights. She is president of the Woodland Heights Neighborhood Association.
“It's a growing problem in my neighborhood as well as in some other neighborhoods in the city,” she says.
“I know of neighbors who have been bothered while walking around in the evening,” Volz says. “I know neighbors who have been knocked down and had to fight off the dog. And we had a homicide and a suicide over a loose dog.”
She was referring to the Sept. 16 shooting death of Charles Tart by Robert S. Parmley Jr., who subsequently took his own life in a police stand-off.
Volz said residents had repeatedly complained about Tart's dogs running loose and he was shot while looking for one.
Volz says she also knows of an instance where a woman was asleep in her home with her 1-year-old when she woke up to find the neighbor's dogs in her house. They had jumped a fence and entered the house through the doggy-door.
“We still have dogs that run loose and kill cats and small dogs,” Volz says. “It is not good.
“I have talked to Animal Control and to the chief of police.”
Volz says Springfield-Greene County Animal Control is well intentioned but under-staffed.
She shouted to the owner, ‘He's hurt me!'
Giles is frustrated that she was bit and disappointed the Animal Control report, in her view, downplays the seriousness of what happened to her.
On the day Zeus bit her, Giles was walking to Price Cutter, about a mile away, to buy paper towels. She does not have a car and cannot afford one.
She tells me she was widowed years ago but then remarried. Her second husband moved into her house on Dale Street, she says. When they divorced, he got the car and she kept the house.
Giles saw the dog running on the opposite side of Dale Street and initially was not alarmed. Two women (one of them the owner) were chasing it.
The dog ran past Giles but circled back and bit her from behind. The dog made a tight circle and came back two more times to bite her. She says she heard the owner call the dog but the dog did not respond.
Giles believes she might have died if the dog had knocked her down and latched onto her throat.
Giles says she shouted to the women, “He's hurt me!”
Nevertheless, she says, the dog disappeared and the owner did, too.
Since the bites, Zeus wears a muzzle
Jungers, the owner, tells me she left the scene not because she wanted to flee to avoid responsibility. Instead, she says, she left to continue to chase the dog.
“I was not trying to run off,” Jungers said. “I was trying to catch the dog. He is just a pup. He is literally just a baby. He has not been outside much.”
Since July 5, she says, Zeus wears a muzzle when he leaves the house and yard.
Jungers is trying to socialize the dog with trips to the park, where Zeus is muzzled.
The breed of Zeus is in dispute. Giles says the dog, based on appearance, is at least part pit bull. Baker tells me the same thing.
However, the owner says the dog is a mix of Labrador retriever and dachshund. That's what is on the animal control report, which was provided to me by Giles.
I asked Jungers how she knew the breed. She said the former owner told her the dog was a mix of Labrador retriever and dachshund.
Why does the breed matter?
It doesn't matter in terms of the biting incident, but Springfield requires pit bulls to be registered. A person can be ticketed for failing to register a pit bull.
A rating system for severity of dog bites
Animal control is within the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.
I asked spokesman Aaron Schekorra how an animal control officer determines a dog's breed.
“Breed determinations for crossbreeds are done using a visual inspection that is based solely on physical characteristics of a dog and is largely subjective,” Schekorra said via email.
Giles believes her injuries were more severe than what was written on the report, which referred to the “Dr. Ian Dunbar's Dog Bite Scale,” which has six levels of bite severity.
Level 1: “Obnoxious or aggressive behavior but no skin-contact by teeth.”
Level 6: “Victim death.”
The bites on Giles were classified Level 2 by the animal control officer.
Level 2 is “Skin-contact by teeth but no skin-puncture. However, may be skin nicks (less than one tenth of an inch deep) and slight bleeding caused by forward or lateral movement of teeth against skin, but no vertical punctures.”
Giles showed me a photo of the blood-soaked jeans, orange in color, that she wore at the time she was bitten.
She says she bleeds easily because she has varicose veins.
Too fearful to walk outside
I asked Schekorra if there was a standard protocol for handling an animal control case in which a dog has bitten two people the same day. He responded:
“There is not a prescribed action that is always taken when a dog bites more than one person in a short period of time. The actions taken by Animal Control are decided based on all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the situation.
“While we understand that the bite victim in this case may disagree with the officer’s assessment of the circumstances and she approached you, we do not do interviews about specific Animal Control cases.”
Giles tells me she no longer walks outside because she fears being attacked by a dog.
She has contacted lawyers in an attempt to see if she can sue Jungers for at least partial compensation for her medical expenses.
“All I know is that I was debt free before I went to the store to buy paper towels and now it is going to cost me thousands,” she says.
“I still think that dog will kill a child.”
This is Pokin Around column No. 125.
