‘They took chunks’: Man recounts dog attack that left him with physical, mental scars
By Lisa Crane
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WALKER COUNTY, Alabama (WVTM) — A Walker County man is lucky to be alive after being attacked by a pack of stray dogs. He was severely mauled in July and is just now able to walk again.
Thomas Lowe described the harrowing experience. “This is where they took me down at,” Lowe said. “So I remember trying to keep the two black dogs off of me, and the more aggressive they got, the other dogs that was around got aggressive too. So they was all on me.”
Lowe said he was used to seeing stray dogs in his neighborhood. There were dozens of them. He felt sorry for them and often fed them with a makeshift feeder. But when the attack happened, he didn’t have food, he had his back turned about to enter his fenced yard when two of the dogs he knew were aggressive, jumped on him from behind.
“There was about four or five dogs on me at one time when I tried to kick the black ones off me because I felt a bite on my head and whatnot,” he said.
Thomas said he doesn’t know how long the attack lasted because at some point he passed out from the pain, but he knows he was dragged by those dogs at least 20 feet down the road.
“They tore my ear all up,” Lowe said. “Got my face all up, both my arms. I mean, they took chunks. I mean, big chunks. I got staples in back here and right here. And my knee, my leg. Well, my legs are not as bad as my arms. And my ear was.”
Lowe had artificial skin grafts on both his arms, and you can still see the dozens of puncture wounds on his legs. Lowe’s body is healing, but he’ll always carry the scars, not just the physical ones, but psychological scars as well.
“I have nightmares about these dogs attacking me and my fiancée. I wake up in cold sweats at nighttime because of these dogs attacking me. It’s just terrible, man,” he said.
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