On November 10th I decided to take my A Team (my babies) to the park so they could kill some excess energy. While I was dressing them, I heard my dogs (Maya and Llama) fighting. The noise escalated to a level I had never heard from them before and I could hear the back gate rattling. I assumed a stray was barking at them through the fence. I went out the front door and around the side of the house to chase the dog away. What I saw next horrified me. A very large pitbull had Maya's throat clamped between his jaws and he was trying to pull her out under the gate. She was emitting a blood curdling raspy yelp and all of my neighbors were collecting to investigate the sound. I yelled for help and screamed "he's eating my dogs!!" but no one moved. I think they were all as shocked as I was. Finally a large biker man from a few houses down came jogging up and attempted to pull the pitbull off my beloved pet. He couldn't budge him. He started kicking the dog in the hea
d and punching him but the pitbull would not release my dog. He just shook his head wildly trying to kill Maya. Two hispanic men ran up and stood at the end of my driveway and I asked if this was their dog. They informed me that the dog belonged to their neighbor and he wasn't home. I told them I was going inside to get my gun and by the time I got back out, the dog better be gone. After I got inside I realized there were about 20 of my neighbors standing outside including several children and I decided a gun was not a good idea, so I opted for a metal pole from my garage. When I returned to the side of my house with the metal pole, the biker had gotten the dog away from my gate and was holding him up off the ground by his neck. The pitbull thrashed and bit the man which caused him to drop the dog and he ran back to the fence and unfortunately locked his jaws on Llama. 
While the biker was kicking the pitbull I was beating it with the metal pole as hard as I could and the blows didn't even seem to phase him. The biker then yelled at me to get the dogs into the house so we'd have a better chance at getting the pitbull away. I ran through the house and took the dogs out of the dog run but they were bleeding too badly to let them into the house so I moved them to the larger part of the backyard. The men who live nextdoor to the pitbull's owner tied some twine around the dog's neck and were leading him home when I returned to the front yard. My kids were crying in fear, my dogs were bleeding profusely, and I was a furious wreck. I followed the men and watched them return the dog to it's yard. They informed me his owner knew he was vicious and knew he kept getting out of the yard. His attempt to rectify this was to push a basketball hoop up against the gate to try and keep the animal in his yard. What a fool. One of my neighbors had called the police and animal control who shortly thereafter showed up at my house and were collecting eye witness reports from myself and my neighbors. I called my mom and asked for her help to get my dogs to an emergency vet clinic since Ian was at work with the car. Bill was on his way with the truck, Grandma and my mother were on their way to offer loving support and to watch the kids while I went to the ER with the dogs. I picked up Llama's ear from the yard and put it on ice in the hopes that it might have a chance at being reattached.After 20 minutes, the ER was able to stop Llama's bleeding and they gave me an estimate to fix both dogs:
$2,300... plus tax!
My heart sank. There was no way I could afford to have them fixed up. I opted to just take them home. The next day I took them to their normal vet and got them into surgery. About $1000 and tons of meds and stitches later, the dogs are doing great! A little disfigured, but still great.
