Five-year-old Saskatoon boy suffers head injury in dog attack

Warning: this story contains a graphic image of an injury.

A Saskatoon couple says they felt ignored by police after their five-year-old foster son was attacked by a dog outside the Meadowgreen Confectionary on March 22.

“He was walking to school with his foster dad and his nine-year-old brother and some guy was in the store and just letting his dog run around the parking lot, and it attacked,” said the boy’s mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her son’s identity.

“It almost ripped his whole scalp off the top of his head.”

When the father moved to pry the dog’s jaws open, he says the owner jumped in and tried to wrestle him away from the dog.

A passerby pulled up in a van and offered to take them to the hospital. On the way, they saw the police speaking to the dog owner, he says.

When they pulled over to talk to the police, they were told to wait while they got the dog home, he says. Instead, they drove to the emergency room.

It took over 50 stitches to close the wound on the boy’s scalp, the parents said. The nurse told his father that it was centimetres away from puncturing the skull. Source: Facebook

The mother was upset the police didn’t show more concern for her injured child.

CTV News reached out to the Saskatoon Police Service and they confirmed police responded to a report of a dog attack around 8:40 a.m. on March 22 around Avenue W South and 18th Street West.

Police said they located the dog and its owner, and that officers asked the parent to leave the scene because the dog was becoming aggressive toward them.

“While officers were speaking to the owner, a woman in a vehicle pulled up and began shouting at all parties. She stated that it was that dog that attacked her child before the officers asked her to remove herself from the area as the dog was becoming aggressive towards her.”

The victim’s parent filed a police report, and the incident is now being investigated by Saskatoon animal control, police said.

It took over 50 stitches to close the wound on the boy’s scalp, the parents said. The nurse told his father that it was centimetres away from puncturing the skull.

They say it was irresponsible of the owner to leave the dog outside unrestrained. The boy’s foster mother thinks the dog may have to be euthanized.

“We will be taking them to court if they don’t euthanize them ... he’s going to go after another kid.”