A group of unleashed dogs attacked a Ponte Vedra Beach couple and their tiny Papillon Friday afternoon, leaving the pooch without a leg and his owners traumatized.
Tim and Joyce Hayes told The Citizen that they went for a routine walk at the beach near their Turtle Shores home with 9-month-old Rocky around noon.
As they’ve done for decades, the couple set up two low beach chairs near the waterline as Rocky settled underneath Tim’s seat and began digging a hole.
“It’s just crazy. Me screaming, the dog screaming. We’ve been here so long, we just never thought this would happen,”
Joyce Hayes told The Citizen
Roughly 45 minutes later, Tim, a restaurant development executive, noticed a pack of five dogs splashing in the water about 150 feet to his right.
“It was sort of unusual to see that many,” he said. “It looked like they were unleashed, but the owner was there with them. We really didn’t think too much of it. The dogs were in and out of the water.”
But not long after, a large pit bull mix suddenly leaped over Tim’s lap, landed on top of Rocky and clamped down his jaws on the yelping animal.
“He had his teeth on his head,” Tim recounted. “He was lifting him up and sort of thrashing him around.”
Joyce said the couple’s umbrella and chairs toppled over in the chaos as she began screaming. The stretch of beach was empty at the time, and the appeals for help went unheard.
As another one of the pit bulls attacked Rocky, Tim managed to wrench him from the dog’s maw and covered the bleeding animal with his own body.
“I figured they wouldn’t attack me, they just wanted to get at Rocky,” Tim said, noting that he and his wife have owned dogs their entire 24 years in Ponte Vedra Beach.
But one of the dogs began biting Tim, tearing at the side of his head.
“I just tried pulling them off,” Joyce said. “Tim was bleeding profusely. I kept yelling at the woman to help me get the dogs off, and she did.”
The dogs’ owner eventually managed to gather up their leashes and brought them under control — before walking hurriedly away from the scene, Joyce said.
She recalled seeing three pit bull mixes, an American bulldog, and, somewhat incongruously, a blonde longhaired Chihuahua.
The latter two dogs did not take part in the assault.
“I kept yelling at her to give me her name, to give me her phone number,” she said. “She told me a name and she gave me some numbers, I heard 904.”
But the woman eventually kept walking and disappeared from view. More concerned with her bleeding spouse and maimed pet, Joyce abandoned the chase.
“There was a hunk of flesh off of Rocky’s leg,” she said. “He wasn’t moving, just in total shock.”
The couple jumped in their car and headed to Antigua Veterinary Practice in St. Augustine. Tim said he knew his injuries were manageable, but that Rocky’s life was on the line.
“We were quite a sight when we walked in there,” Joyce said, telling The Citizen that she had wrapped a T-shirt around Tim’s head to stop his bleeding.
After a quick assessment, a vet told the couple that Rocky needed emergency surgery and they should head to a facility in Jacksonville Beach roughly 40 minutes away.
Staffers there told the shaken couple that several nerves had been severed in one of Rocky’s legs — and advised an amputation.
“He wouldn’t have been able to use his leg,” Tim said. “It would have just caused him pain and gotten in the way.”
After leaving Rocky in the operating room, Tim and Joyce finally got around to addressing his own injuries — six hours after the attack.
Doctors at Baptist Medical Center stitched up his lacerated face and administered anti-rabies shots — including five in his head.
While badly rattled, the couple said that they know the scenario could have been far worse.
“My dog could be dead, I could have gotten my ear ripped off,” Tim said. “So in a way we were lucky.”
After a successful surgery, they brought Rocky home on Saturday down one leg but thankful he was alive.
“He’s doing alright,” Tim said. “He’s here with us, he’s recovering. There’s a lot of medication so he’s a little buzzed. It’s going to be a longterm healing process. He’s learning how to get along with three legs.”
The couple is now working with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and animal control officials to help identify the dogs’ owner.
They described her as a white woman in her 40s of average build, wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
Tim said he was less concerned with legal consequences than ensuring that the same dogs don’t attack again.
“It’s just crazy,” Joyce said of the incident. “Me screaming, the dog screaming. We’ve been here so long, we just never thought this would happen.”
