\u201cHe just grabbed on to him, held him and shook him for a good four minutes. They couldn\u2019t get him off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two women who witnessed the attack rushed to help and eventually managed to separate the dogs.<\/p>\n
The beloved family dog was described by his owner as “lovely, caring and gentle”. <\/p>\n
Rory was rushed to a veterinary clinic and underwent emergency surgery but his injuries proved too severe and he had to be put down.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have any choice. We had to let him go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathan said the loss had devastated the family, who were still coming to terms with how quickly the attack had unfolded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s horrendous that it happened, it\u2019s horrendous that we lost a dog that was so young.<\/p>\n
\u201cA dog\u2019s part of the family and he was just a lovely, caring, gentle dog that just didn\u2019t deserve any of that level of pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
His wife had particularly struggled with guilt in the days since witnessing the brutal attack, wondering if there was anything she could have done differently.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018I should have taken a picture of this guy, and I could have grabbed a stick, and I should have done this\u2019,\u201d Nathan said she had told herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way in that moment there was anything she could do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathan said his own focus had shifted from grieving Rory to ensuring the dog responsible was found.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo days ago we were crying constantly. Now it\u2019s almost like I\u2019ve got a mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be able to find who this person is because this dog has to get found,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s ruthless, it\u2019s absolutely dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Palmerston North City Council is appealing for information after reviewing CCTV footage and checking the national dog database without identifying the owner.<\/p>\n
Witnesses described the owner as a white male with dark hair, about 1.75m tall, of solid build and wearing a blue cap. The dog was described as a white pitbull or bully-type breed with a dark grey patch over its right eye.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information about the dog or its owner is urged to contact the Palmerston North City Council Animal Control team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe just grabbed on to him, held him and shook him for a good four minutes. They couldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,3648,89,14645,6179,9219,2109,11784,1866,2949,2082,305,42,5838,18087,43,529,2738,6292,46728,3367,15388,242781,40,38,41,39,17454],"class_list":["post-483424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-animal","tag-attack","tag-beloved","tag-died","tag-dog","tag-family","tag-fatal","tag-find","tag-finding","tag-for","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-help","tag-issued","tag-news","tag-north","tag-owner","tag-palmerston","tag-plea","tag-pleads","tag-responsible","tag-savage","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-whose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}