MN: Woman Attacked By Dogs Wants Breed 'Exterminated'

Esme Murphy, Reporting
Apr 24, 2007 10:57 pm US/Central

(WCCO) A woman who was a victim of a pit bull attack on Monday has said enough of the attacks and enough of the dogs. Joann Jungmann is in the hospital after two pit bulls jumped her. She told WCCO-TV she thought she was going to die. "I started screaming, 'Somebody help me, somebody help me!'" said Jungmann.

Jungmann is the fourth person in the Twin Cities to be attacked in just a month. Her arm is bitten to the bone and her legs are punctured. She described the slow-motion horror of the attack as the dogs were biting her she remembered news stories of other recent attacks. "What came to my head was that lady who almost died and that little boy and that little girl," she said.

The dogs' owner said he's sorry about the attack and that his dogs are now at animal control and will be put to sleep.

Jungmann said when she got to the front door Monday morning to try and serve some legal papers she read the sign that said go to the side door. At the side door there is a "Beware of Dog Sign". She said she never went into the yard, and that the dogs jumped over the fence. She said one neighbor called the dogs off and others rushed to help. "Another lady, she was kneeling down praying with me," Jungmann said.

She is grateful for those who helped and she is passionate about the breed that attacked her. "That breed of dogs, the pit bull should be exterminated from the face of the earth," she said.

Not all of the recent attacks in the Twin Cities were by pit bulls. The boy waiting for a school bus in Minneapolis that was severely bitten earlier this month was attacked by an Akita.

While Joann Jungmann's feelings toward pit bulls are understandable, some pit bull owners and rescue groups insist it is not the breed or the dog that is to blame in these cases but the owner. "If you target a specific breed, it's akin to racial profiling. There's just no basis for that," said Lisa Peterson, spokesman for the American Kennel Club. She added that "pit bull" is a catchall for crosses of three breeds of terrier.

Beth DeLaForest, a director of A Rotta Love Plus, a local rescue group of Rottweilers and pit bulls, said pit bulls may have a bad reputation, but there is no such thing as a bad breed of dog. "There is such a thing as bad owners," she said. "When situations like this happen, people tend to blame the wrong end of the leash. ... It's owner accountability. I don't think it's a pit bull problem, it's a social problem."

Keith Streff, director for investigations for the Animal Humane Society in Golden Valley, disagrees. "To say that there are no bad pit bulls, I think is an injustice to public safety," he said. "The breed is innately hard-wired to be able to perform at peak capacity when it attacks."

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. )

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