Larissa Corboy has been reunited with her beloved dog, Mouse, and discharged from hospital - both bearing the wounds of a harrowing ordeal.
The pair were mauled by a pack of five dogs on Tuesday night while out for a run on a public track in the rural Canterbury community of Loburn.
"That's when one bit my butt and the other grabbed my ankle and pulled me to the ground."
Corboy says the owner of the dogs, in a car behind them, was powerless to call them off as they tore into her and 6-month-old Mouse.
"He yelled at me to kick them and I was thinking, 'I'm not going to be able to kick all these dogs'," Corboy said.
When the owner did get out of the car, the dogs turned on him as he tried to intervene.
"He was trying to pull them off and he eventually got on the ground and held Mouse around the neck so he was protected around his jugular," Coroboy told Newshub.
Corboy was even more horrified when the owner put the dogs in his car and took off after the attack, leaving her and Mouse badly injured on the isolated track in the dark.
The owner pulled over further up the road and called an ambulance for his own injuries.
Corboy has spent the last two days in hospital having surgery to repair the deep bite wounds on her leg.
Mouse also needed stitches for his wounds.
The Waimakariri District Council says it has tracked down the owner of the dogs, who has already had three of them put down.
The District Court say they will need more time to investigate before any decision on prosecution or infringement can be made.
Her family say the area is popular with runners and even children on their ponies.
"[I] probably didn't really reflect on it until we were in the hospital," said Corboy.
"This could have been a whole lot worse than it actually was."
A lucky escape - but still battered, bruised and wounded from an attack by a pack of vicious dogs.
Newshub.
