Peter Hetherington, Washington,
Mom's Tale from Maygen Hetherington

4/16/07

Thank you for providing such a resourceful website and creating awareness for an issue that I never thought about until it affected me personally.
                       
My mother was watching my 3 year old son for me on April 16, 2007 while I was at work. She my son Peter grocery shopping at a nearby store that we have all gone to hundreds of times. On the way into the store, my son walked by an 180lb Bullmastiff/Rottweiler mix that randomly attacked him from behind. He tore away skin from the back of his scalp, created 2 skull fractures, removed the top portion of his ear from his head, and made other lacerations in his cheek. Looking at your website, I have found how truly blessed my son was incurring his injuries where he did as compared to some of the other children. He spent one week in the ICU and is now recovering well at home. The doctors were able to reattach his ear and stitch up his other wounds nicely.

In doing some research, we found that this animal lived less than 1⁄4 mile from the grocery store. Not properly contained in the house or yard, the animal had wandered down to this grocery store multiple times where the STORE EMPLOYEES would chain him up outside the entrance. I had actually seen this dog there before but always assumed the owner was at least on the property somewhere. We were told that it had been chained up outside the store dozens of times and only a few times was the owner contacted to come pick up the dog.
 
This obviously angers both myself and my husband because the dog could have been 1) contained properly by the owner and 2) reported to animal control the first time it had come to the store. If these things were done, the attack on my son would never have happened.

In reading your website, it is making sense to me more now why the dog may have attacked our little boy. Being chained multiple times in an unfamiliar place with multiple unfamiliar people around it every day must have made the dog feel threatened at one point or another. The odd thing is, my son showed no interest in the animal and it attacked him anyway.
 
I am happy to find the resources on your site to raise awareness in our community not just to owners, but to stores who allow animals to be chained outside their entrances. This is something I see all the time. I still can’t believe the employees chained a strange dog outside the entrance of their busy market. I am hoping that by creating attention to this issue, no other child will have to go through what my son and so many other children have gone through because of negligence.
 
Thank you for taking the time to read our story and I pray that God will bless your cause and save lives through the awareness you are spreading throughout our nation. Please let me know if there is anything I can do here in Seattle.
 
Sincerely,
Maygen Hetherington

Note: Maygen would like to help other parents going through the same thing; she may be contacted at mayguseena@msn.com