“It’s one of those things you read about and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’ll never happen to us’, and then it did happen to us.” Milan was at the park and sports fields in Titirangi the morning after Easter Monday for rugby league training with her uncle and cousins when the “unprovoked” dog attack took place, Tufuga said. Her brother-in-law was taking the Māngere schoolgirl to toilets next to the playground when the pair crossed paths with a couple walking their unleashed small, mixed-breed dog. “[The dog] came to sniff her for a bit, and then [the attack] just happened really quick. My brother-in-law … turned around and the whole thing was taking place. “He said the owners froze, they didn’t know what to do. So it was him that actually had to pull the dog off her, and then he was trying to control the dog while the owners were trying to get its leash back on.” Her daughter hadn’t done anything to provoke an attack, Tufuga said. “She was around my brother-in-law’s dog, so maybe it sniffed it on her. She didn’t try to pat it whatsoever.” After the attack several people came to help, including an off-duty police officer and those running a Bay Olympic Football Club school holiday programme nearby, who took Milan to their changing rooms. “I’m very grateful to them, and to the off-duty cop who also jumped in to help gather [the dog owners’ details] for my brother-in-law while he was busy.” Milan was taken to an urgent care clinic where the bites were cleaned and dressed, putting her on crutches for a week and needing several return visits to the doctor after some wounds became infected, Tufuga said. “She had a deep gash on her right leg that needed six stitches, but she also had a lot of little puncture wounds … to her thighs, and on the front [of her legs] too. “I’m very grateful she didn’t get knocked down.” The St Joseph’s Ōtāhuhu pupil was now pain-free and fully mobile, and also seemed to have escaped serious mental trauma, her mum said. The attack also hadn’t affected Milan’s affection for the family’s own dog, a staffy-labrador cross. “I showed her the [first Herald] article [on the attack] yesterday, and she read it. She was a bit quiet for a while, and she said it made her sad reading it. “But she’s actually so tough. We took her back to Crum Park last week and she was a bit apprehensive about it, but once we got there she was completely fine … if anything, it’s me and my husband that are probably more traumatised.” The owners of the dog gave their details to Tufuga’s brother-in-law and an Auckland Council spokeswoman confirmed this week the dog, which was registered, had been seized. An investigation now under way would determine the dog’s future and whether its owners would be prosecuted. Her husband wanted prosecution, but after her initial anger subsided Tufuga was “a bit up in the air”, she said. “I feel a bit more sympathetic towards them, because we have a dog as well.” The council this week urged owners to leash their dogs in public areas after highlighting the “preventable” and “not isolated” attack on Milan. “Off-leash dog attacks on sports fields are on the rise. Similar situations have occurred at other sports grounds where off-leash dogs have rushed at junior players during training,” council licensing and compliance general manager Robert Irvine said in the in-house newsletter Our Auckland. “Week after week, dogs are walked off-leash across Auckland’s sports fields while children train, play and compete; an attack can and does happen so quickly when there are kids running around and a dog is off leash.” Earlier this year, 4-year-old Bay of Plenty boy Timothy Tu’uaki Rolleston-Bryan was fatally mauled by dogs in Katikati. There have also been other serious attacks on children and adults by dogs. Ultimately, Tufuga wanted people to remember dogs “are animals … they can turn at any time”. They should always be leashed in public areas – something Tufuga herself admitted to not having always done in the past. “It’s actually a lesson for us, to be honest. And now we’re like, ‘I don’t think we’re ever going to do that again’.” Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.