Owner of attack dogs charged

It is still unclear why the dogs stopped their attack on a Waikato jogger. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

The owner of eight pig dogs that mauled a Waikato woman yesterday has been arrested and charged, police said today.

Mother-of-two Margit Christensen, 36, was set upon as she jogged along a rural road in Arapuni, 37km east of Te Awamutu, about 1pm yesterday.

A 29-year-old Arapuni woman faces eight charges of owning a dog that caused injury, Sergeant Jason Shailer of Putaruru police said.

She has been bailed to appear in Tokoroa District Court next week.

Ten dogs have been seized from the property and the eight dogs that were involved in the attack have been destroyed, Mr Shailer said.

A decision would be made in "due course" about the fate of two dogs which were tied up during the attack, he said.

Mrs Christensen, from Putaruru, endured a sustained attack that lasted 15 minutes, and suffered numerous bites to much of her body.

Her husband, Sven Christensen, said a German friend was unicycling up ahead when she heard Mrs Christensen screaming as three dogs attacked her.

"She was screaming with three dogs on her, trying to kick them off when another five or so dogs came flying across and she fell to the ground."

The friend alerted a neighbour to the attack and called Mr Christensen, who got to the scene before medical help arrived.

"By the time I got there the dogs were off ... Margit was basically just sitting, she looked like a big blob of blood on the side of the road," he said.

"Everyone could see how bad it was."

Mr Christensen said he knew the owner of the dogs personally and that she had helped get the dogs off his wife.

"She kept whacking them with sticks and they kept trying to come back and come back, and then she managed get them off."

The owner's two other dogs should also be put down, he said.

There needed to be tougher consequences for dog owners who could not control and manage their dogs, he told Radio New Zealand.

Mrs Christensen underwent about nine hours of surgery overnight at Waikato Hospital, and is now in a stable condition in a ward.

However, plastic surgery registrar Katerina Anesti said she would need to undergo further operations and would be hospitalised for at least a couple of weeks.

Dr Anesti said she had never seen so many extensive wounds on a patient.

"It was a shock to us."

It was a "miracle" Mrs Christensen survived the attack, she said.

"She was almost covered by dog marks - some were quite extensive but there was no major damage to tissue or organs."

Dr Anesti said Mrs Christensen was able to protect some of her body by curling into a foetal position.

- NZPA