https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/10/17/cherokee-county-man-unrecognizable-after-breaking-up-fight-between-two-family-dogs/

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — A Cherokee County man suffered severe facial injuries while breaking up a fight between two family dogs.

Now he’s asking for help to pay for facial reconstructive surgery critical to his recovery.

Life changed in a split second when Dustin Low tried to break up a fight between two family pets.

“It was probably a matter of five minutes total action time, and then the rest was just trying to gather myself, my breath and control the bleeding,” Low said

His wife, Chelsea, recalls the night she looked at her husband and noticed his facial tissue had been badly damaged.

“He came downstairs and was like, ‘I need help with the pets.’ I’m like, ‘No, you need a hospital,’” Chelsea recalled.

Medical bills for the surgeries have been stacking up, and Low’s final surgery will help him return to a sense of normalcy.

“We need $12,310 just to get him on the operating table for the third surgery. They will not do the third surgery until we pay $12,310. That’s for the first two surgeries. The last surgery is $6,500,” Chelsea said.

“It will get rid of this piece, which is the rest of my forehead flap, and it will sew that back up,” Low said.

As Dustin and Chelsea pray for a miracle, they said they don’t hold anger toward the dogs and plan to keep them.

“It was a mistake. It was a freak accident. They didn’t want to hurt him,” Chelsea said.

Please be aware that this link contains an image of a dead kiwi.

Article text:

A Northland woman has pleaded guilty to owning a dog that killed four kiwi during a spate of wildlife deaths at an isolated bay last year.

Rose Paraha, 55, admitted the charge laid by the Department of Conservation when she appeared in the Kaikohe District Court last week.

Court documents show the birds were killed around 27 December at Wharengaere Bay, on Purerua Peninsula in the northern Bay of Islands.

Paraha is due to be sentenced in January.

The dog, identified from saliva found on the dead birds, was a female pitbull-cross named Heaven.

Wharengaere Bay has been a hotspot for kiwi maulings for several years, with DOC estimating 20 deaths caused by dogs last year alone.

Two dogs were seized from Paraha's home by council animal control staff in January this year, but RNZ understands only one could be linked to the dead kiwi by DNA testing.
The other dog was returned.

It is not the first time Paraha has been in court for owning a dog that killed wildlife.

After an earlier spate of kiwi deaths, in 2019, she pleaded guilty to owning a dog that caused the deaths of six kiwi.
Some of the dead birds were found on the lawn outside her home.

On that occasion she was convicted and ordered to pay $300 in reparations.

No fine was imposed because she did not have the means to pay.

The dog, which had been allowed to roam freely, was destroyed.

Last year's kiwi deaths at Wharengaere Bay include nine between late January and early March, four found dead on the beach in November, and the four found on 26 and 27 December.

Purerua Peninsula is home to one of the biggest populations of North Island brown kiwi in the country, and has the highest kiwi call count recorded in New Zealand.

The peninsula also boasts a major community- and hapū-led conservation initiative, Predator-free Purerua-Mataroa.
Elsewhere in the Bay of Islands, at least six kiwi were killed in Ōpua Forest, near Paihia, in 2023.

Post-mortem examinations found the Ōpua kiwi had been mauled by dogs but the owners were never identified. Another spate occurred at Wharau Road, east of Kerikeri, in 2015, when at least eight kiwi were killed.

In that case, two owners were fined for failing to keep their dogs under control and three dogs were destroyed.

In 2021, a Russell man with previous convictions relating to roaming dogs was fined a record $4500 for owning a dog that caused the deaths of two kiwi.

‘Shattered to bits’: Dog owner arrested after jogger mauled in north Brisbane park. A Brisbane dog owner has defended her pets as “really good dogs” during a dramatic police arrest, after the animals left a jogger fighting for his life.

Images of dogs start at 42 seconds into the video.

Only pit bull type dogs were seized, no other breeds.

Father, son tied to federal dogfighting investigation in Harford County

WHITEFORD, Md. — What started with a complaint about dogs living in inhumane conditions at a Whiteford home has now led to a federal dogfighting investigation involving a father and son.

The investigation traces back to a citizen's complaint last July about dogs living in inhumane conditions at a home on Eagles Grove Court in Whiteford. Investigators say they later found items used to train dogs to fight, implicating 48-year-old Theodore Stinson and his 25-year-old son, also named Theodore Stinson.

At the Humane Society of Harford County in Fallston, half of the shelter’s dogs awaiting adoption are pit bulls, and Marketing Director Erin Long says those who train them for blood sport do a disservice to the entire breed.

“We have people all the time telling us, ‘I’m looking for a specific type of dog and I don’t even want to consider a pit bull,” said Long.

Adding to the misperception of the dogs as being inherently aggressive, when often that stems from abuse or neglect.

“It just boggles my mind that we still are hearing about people that are dog fighting,” said Long, “I think that, as a society, we should be bothered by that, because people that are doing that are doing that, that get excited by that, they’re lacking any compassion and empathy at all, which is scary.”

WINTER GARDEN, Fla - An Orange County woman is recovering from a severe leg injury after she says she placed her body over her infant daughter's stroller to protect the child from a neighbor's dog that attacked her. 

She is questioning why the animal was still in the neighborhood despite previous reports of aggression.

‘Most unimaginable pain’

What they're saying:

Katie Blacketor said the attack happened Oct. 9 as she was with her 4-month-old daughter, Harley.

"He came from behind me and yanked my leg out from under me," Blacketor said. "The dog was just thrashing me back and forth. Oh, like the worst, most unimaginable pain that you can think of."

As the dog bit her leg, Blacketor said she focused on protecting her daughter.

"I just laid on top of the stroller, covered it with my body to protect her," she said.

Blacketor said she feared the dog would turn on her baby if it released its grip on her.

"All I'm trying to think is like, is there anything I can do? Should I do anything? Cause like, if he lets go of me, like my baby is the next target," she said.

Blacketor received nine stitches. Doctors are monitoring her for infection and plan to assess whether she has ligament damage after the swelling subsides.

She also faces a series of rabies shots because the dog, identified as Kobe, was not current on its rabies vaccinations.

"The dog is not up-to-date on its rabies vaccines, and so we're doing the rabies protocol now, which is a series of shots over 14 days," Blacketor said.

Previous reports involving the dog

Dig deeper:

According to Orange County Animal Services records described in the report, Kobe had been involved in two earlier incidents involving other dogs.

On June 25, the dog was reportedly being walked off-leash when it lunged at another dog. Animal Services said there was no physical contact and the other dog's owner did not provide a written statement, leaving the agency with insufficient evidence to issue a citation.

About two and a half weeks before that incident, Kobe was reportedly off-leash when it attacked a dog named Vader, a 9-year-old miniature schnauzer being walked by its owner.

Vader was taken to an animal hospital with puncture wounds around his neck, bite marks on his body and an eye injury, according to the account.

Vader's owner said the dog intervened when Kobe went after her two young children.

Animal Services cited Kobe's owner in connection with the earlier incident, with fines totaling $640, according to the report