Man 'traumatised' after flesh ripped from terrier's leg in towpath dog attack

A man says he is ‘traumatised’ after seeing his dog viciously attacked on a canal towpath by a dog that jumped from a narrowboat. John Collins, 58, said seven-year-old terrier-cross Tilly had flesh ‘stripped’ from her back leg in the attack on the Shropshire Union Canal in Ellesmere Port, close to Cheshire Oaks, on Saturday (April 20).

Police said the owners of the dog ‘failed to intervene’ in the incident, which left Tilly, who weighs less than 7.5kg, requiring emergency surgery. Mr Collins said the boat and its three occupants were nowhere to be found when he returned to the scene shortly after rushing Tilly to the vet, leaving a ‘massive oil slick’ behind them.

Tilly is now making a good recovery. Mr Collins’ vet bills have already run to £650, and he expects the full cost of the damage to eventually total more than £1,000.

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Mr Collins was walking his two rescue dogs, brother and sister Scruffy and Tilly, alongside a narrowboat moored close to the waterworks off the A5117 around 3.30pm when the incident occurred.

He said: “I managed to pick my Scruffy up because he was right next to me. By the time I got across to Tilly, about ten yards away, the other dog had bitten her and torn the flesh off her back leg.”

Mr Collins described the offending dog as a black Patterdale terrier. He said: “When she first got bitten, the flesh was just hanging off her leg. It had stripped it. The wound was unbelievable.”

Three people, two men and a woman, and dog, a Jack Russel were aboard the grey narrowboat. “I was saying ‘Your dog, look what he has done, she’s been bitten,’ and they just said ‘It’s nothing, he hasn’t done anything to your dog,’” Mr Collins recalled.

“The man with one arm walked off with the dog to give it to the woman, and that’s when he said ‘I’ve told you about these dogs they’re b*****ds’, so it wasn’t an isolated incident.”

Mr Collins added: “I’m really concerned at this point. I’m a mile away from home and the dog has a serious injury.

“There wasn’t any time for hanging about so I said ‘I’m coming back, and I’ll see you about this because there’s going to be a big vet’s bill involved here. I dropped Tilly off at the veterinary place, dropped Scruffy back at the house and when I got back to the canal, they had got off, and they had left a massive oil slick behind them, all the way towards Chester from there.

“It upset me because I had been seeing all the ducklings along there, and I had seen five kingfishers on that stretch, as well as herons and cormorants.”

Mr Collins described the incident as ‘traumatic’, saying: “I know that I’ve suffered some sort of trauma. I’m here on my own, I’m somewhere I don’t know and Tilly was with a vet I don’t know. It was horrendous.”

Tilly is stuck inside unable to walk any distance for more than two weeks. Mr Collins thanked Animal Trust vets in Ellesmere Port and Woolton Veterinary Centre in Liverpool for their care.

“I’ve been through everything with these dogs,” he said, “bad times and good. They were abandoned when they were pups at 10 months old, and Scruffy looks after Tilly. They’re dead close.”

A spokesperson for Cheshire Police said: "At around 4.30pm on Saturday 20 April police were called to reports that a dog had been attacked by other dogs on the canal towpath in Ellesmere Port.

"The caller stated that between 3pm and 3.30pm on 20 April, they had been walking their dog at the side of the canal near to the water treatment site when two dogs jumped off a canal boat and began to attack their dog. The occupants of the canal boat failed to intervene in the incident.