Ursula Grein recovering with her daughter Jutta Handwerk, who wants dogs muzzled. Photo / Greg Bowker
The daughter of an 85-year-old pensioner who suffered serious facial injuries when she was mauled by a rottweiler outside a supermarket wants all dogs muzzled in public.
Jutta Handwerk says her mother, Ursula Grein, is slowly recovering from the attack at the Birkenhead New World supermarket.
Mrs Grein,
a dog lover, had not realised the large dog was potentially dangerous when she went to pat it.
It bit through her upper lip and sliced through flesh and nerves, injuries which may leave her face with a permanent droop.
Mrs Handwerk said the attack could not have happened if the dog had been muzzled.
"What is so difficult about that? Instead of worrying about which dogs are dangerous and which are not, just muzzle the lot of them. It's all got too political."
Mrs Handwerk, who would be happy to muzzle her own dogs, said that until muzzles were made compulsory the suffering caused by dog attacks would continue.
Muzzles caused no problems to the dogs.
"They can still breathe and lick water ... they should be put on just like the leash."
Mrs Grein, who used to breed poodles, told the Herald the attack was very unfortunate.
"It looked like a nice dog."
But she was glad it was her and not a child who had tried to pat the dog, which has since been put down.
"A little kid would be dead - it would have taken their whole head."
A Chinese man had been holding the dog on a leash when it attacked.
"He did not know what to do. I was holding my face and blood was pouring everywhere."
The attack on Mrs Grein came just a couple of days after the death of Murupara woman Virginia Ohlson, who was savaged by an unregistered pitbull and a staffordshire cross which were roaming free.
Then on Saturday an 8-year-old Auckland boy and a teenage girl were bitten by two pitbull terriers.
Prime Minister Helen Clark promised to review dog control laws after the fatal attack on Virginia Ohlson.
Northcote MP Dr Jonathan Coleman said last night that the adequacy and enforcement of the rules and the penalties needed analysing first.
He believed it would show the problem was more complex than muzzling all dogs in public.
"There will be the law-abiding people, with dogs that aren't dangerous, who get them muzzled," he said.
"Then the dogs that are the problem, with irresponsible owners, the law won't be complied with and the problem will persist."
Dr Coleman said dogs were a big part of many families' lives.
"I'm sure people don't want to see all dogs muzzled but they want to see dogs restrained appropriately so that they don't interfere with the safety and wellbeing of other people."
