KEY POINTS:
Dawn Brocket is scared when she takes her wheelchair past the house where she was attacked by a dog last month.
"It gives me the willies," the 75-year-old says. "I go fast past there."
Mrs Brocket, who is partially blind and has been in a wheelchair since contracting polio 55 years ago, was attacked by a doberman in Matangi, near Hamilton, on March 20.
She was out for an "evening stroll" when the dog rushed at her through an open gate and took an orange-sized chunk of flesh out of her arm.
"I felt its teeth sink in," Mrs Brocket said this week.
"I couldn't move because of my arm. There was a big gouge out of it. It was bleeding like anything."
Mrs Brocket spent three days in hospital and had plastic surgery.
"It's been awkward with just one arm but it's getting better now," she said.
She was alarmed to hear about the fatal mauling of Murupara woman Virginia Ohlson last Saturday, but felt even more grateful for her own escape.
She was helped by a cyclist, John Bennett, who rode into the doberman when he saw it attacking.
"Thank goodness he was on the spot. I hate to think what would've happened."
After the attack, it emerged that the dog responsible had been impounded two weeks earlier for rushing at another dog.
Mrs Brocket said it and another dog at the property, six doors from her house, were a menace.
Waikato District Council environmental services group manager Nath Pritchard said both dogs were registered, and the doberman had been impounded since the attack.
"It's very likely that the owner will be charged," he said.
No complaints had been received about the other dog.
