"I’ve been in contact with her, and she said she was doing okay," said local DJ Anthony Catton, or DJ Tone, who helped to organize the all-night event in the Calcheak area.
"There are no hard feelings. There’s a lot of love for her, people are sad about the dog. It’s been traumatic for everybody, but we’ll get through it."
Catton said he made the decision to have the dog, Logan, put to sleep immediately after the incident. The six year old husky, malamute and retriever mix had not bitten anybody since he was a puppy, Catton says, and only when he was provoked by some abusive roommates.
Catton says he was filming the dog when the bite occurred, and believes that the girl might have been trying to get into the frame. At the time the dog was sleeping under the stage.
"(The victim) crawled up to him, and he was sleeping on his side. He woke up a little, stretched his legs, and I guess (the victim) startled him. I just heard a ‘ruf’, and then he ran away frightened like he knew he did something bad," said Catton. The dog only bit the girl once.
Catton stayed with the girl, comforting her, until a trained first aid attendant took over. In the meantime somebody else had found Logan and tied the dog to the trailer.
An ambulance was called and the victim was taken to Vancouver, where she had plastic surgery and stitching to repair the damage caused by the bite, which broke through the skin of her upper and lower lip.
Catton gave a friend of the victim some money to pay for the ambulance, and is hoping to start some kind of fundraiser to help her cover her medical and living expenses while she recovers.
He also went to the police with the video of the incident on Sunday, and he was cleared of any wrong-doing. They did support his plan to have the dog put to sleep.
"I just feel awful about everything," said Catton. "It was just a bad situation for everybody. He was my dog for six years, and he was never dangerous. People would come up to him in the village and he would let anyone pat him. He was always walking around with a skateboard or a teddy bear in his mouth. Everybody knew him."
There is no explanation why the dog reacted the way it did, although Catton says most people don’t realize that experts say that you should never approach a dog when it’s sleeping or eating, or when it’s cornered and scared.
