Dog bite victim acted to save sister

By SUSAN ZIELINSKI

Advocate staff

The Siberian husky that attacked two young children in a park in Anders on Tuesday was relentless after it got a taste of blood.

Drayden Ballantyne, eight, was bitten about 10 times after he came to his 10-year-old sister’s rescue. He yelled to his sister to run home, about two blocks away, to get help, while he tried to fight off the dog with his snowboard.

“It kind of tripped him and dragged him off,” said his sister Sara Werner, 10.

She escaped without injury and said the attack at the Allan Street park still doesn’t seem real.

“It was crazy,” said the Grade 4 student, who has a slight build.

Drayden has seven stitches on his left temple, near his ear where a dog bite ripped open the skin. A gauze bandage on his upper left arm covers two big teeth punctures wounds. Bruises and puncture marks cover the young boy’s arms, legs, back, buttocks and ribs.

The dog, a four-year-old male named Chinook, came running at the pair after escaping from a nearby yard. As an animal lover, Sara held out her palm for the dog to sniff her hand. The dog tried to bite her hand and grabbed hold of the bottom of her jacket with his teeth. That’s when her brother started throwing snowballs at the dog and it attacked him.

Luckily, when Drayden was on the ground, he remembered what to do during a bear attack.

“In my old school, they taught me to go like this,” said Drayden, rolling his body into a ball, using him arms to cover and protect his neck. The Grade 2 student learned the manoeuvre when he attended Grade 1 at Oriole Park Elementary School.

One bite from the dog pulled the jacket off Drayden’s 32-kg body.

When his uncle Luke Werner came running to shield his nephew, the dog still wouldn’t stop trying to bite Drayden.

“Luke put him into the skating rink to protect him and the dog was still trying to get into there,” said Drayden’s mother Nicole Werner.

“I think after the dog tasted that, he wanted more. Drayden said the dog was licking the blood off the snow.”

The attack happened shortly after 4:30 p.m. when the brother and sister were the only ones on the neighbourhood snow hill.

Drayden and Sara begged to go sliding that afternoon. With one sick child at home, Nicole said she relented because it was close by.

When Sara raced home, Nicole called 911 and had Sara keep her other brothers in a bedroom while she ran down to the park. When she arrived, the dog ran at her, but police chased it into the rink.

Drayden was trembling from the cold and shock of the attack, his mother said.

“I saw all the blood dripping down his face. I saw blood all down his pant legs, splotches of it, some of it was soaked in blood. When the ambulance came, I didn’t know what I would see when they were cutting his clothes off. I was so scared to look.”

Roger Ballantyne, Drayden and Sara’s dad, was away working in Edmonton on Tuesday and was grateful his brother-in-law was there to help.

“I’m not sure how long Drayden would have been able to fight that dog off,” Roger said.

Roger and Nicole are proud of their son.

“He was brave. He wasn’t worried himself. He was more concerned about his sister,” Roger said.

The dog is under quarantine at Riverside Kennels for 10 days with its future yet to be determined. Enforcement officers were working out details on what charges will be laid.

Nicole said the dog has to be put down. People need to know they have to be responsible for their dogs and that there are consequences when they attack.

“They live right by a park. What if it happened again? That park is always full of kids sliding. What if it’s worse next time?”

Roger worried what the dog could do to a younger, smaller child.

“We paid a price for it and so will the owners of the dog. They’re not going to have a dog anymore. They are going to lose a family pet, which is sad.”

Contact Susan Zielinski at szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com