Linda Annis admits responsibility for her pet dog’s behaviour after it was revealed three months later that a bite she’d characterized as a “nip” turned out to be a wound requiring 27 stitches.

A 92-page report Global News revealed on September 13 includes a text message from the bite victim saying he required 27 stitches to close a “deep slashing bite right through to the muscle” on his bicep.

“If it had been my neck and caught the jugular, I’d be dead,” the text reads.

The man was bit by “Ron,” one of Annis’s two Dalmations, on May 31. She said they were on a leash.

In June Annis told the Now-Leader her dog “nipped” a neighbour in front of her South Surrey home after he reached down to pet it without asking. Police did not come to her house, she said, but a bylaw enforcement officer did. Annis said she’d let her dog licence lapse and renewed it. She claimed the neighbour refused to show her the wound and that she was fully cooperative.

The attack was not on the Surrey Police Service’s radar, Staff Sergeant Lindsey Houghton said at the time.

“The media section isn’t always the first that people tell everything to, not necessarily, but those are the kinds of things that usually would end up in our overnight reports and I never read anything like that,” he said.

Annis received $700 in fines– $300 for the attack, and $200 apiece for each dog for not being licensed. The Dalmation that bit the man was not put down but must be muzzled, isn’t allowed at dog parks and Annis had to put up sign in yard alerting neighbours to the dog.

Annis told the Now-Leader on September 14 the bylaw officer showed her a photo of the man’s wound “and she said to me at that time there was maybe five, maybe six stitches that she could see. I have not seen the medical report.”

“When the incident occurred I asked the gentleman if I could see the wound – he would not show it to me,” she said. “I asked him if he was OK and he said yes, and he asked me to go get an ice pack so I ran into the house to get one and put the dogs away and when I came out he had already gone home.”

She said she then went to his house, several doors down, asked him how he was and if she could see the wound. “He said no. He did tell me he was going to the hospital and I told him at that stage that the dogs had both had all their vaccines and all of that stuff.

“So he went to the hospital and I asked him to send me a note after he went and he did. And then I checked in with him again a couple of days later.”

Annis said she received a letter from his lawyer roughly a month later which she referred to her insurance company.

“What his lawyer asked, whether or not this would be covered by my insurance.”

Annis issued a press release on September 14 under the title “LIKE EVERY RESPONSIBLE DOG OWNER, I KNOW YOU CANNOT EXCUSE A DOG BITE: LINDA ANNIS.”

“I have had dogs my whole life, and this is the first time one of my dogs has bitten someone, it was a real shock,” the Surrey First mayoral candidate states in the press release.

“I have had 10 dogs over the years, and nothing like this has ever happened. It happened so fast and was really out-of-character. But as a dog owner I know I am responsible for my dog’s behaviour.

“Ron now has to be muzzled in public, he cannot visit dog parks, and I have a sign in my yard to let people know there are dogs on the premises,” Annis said. “Regarding not having the licences up-to-date, I have no excuse other than it was an oversight on my part, since I’ve always licensed my dogs. Like most people, my days are full, but keeping a dog’s license up to date is definitely part of being a responsible owner.”

She says she “was not part of the city’s process for providing information, but I wish it had been quicker because the delay became an important part of the story, as it should be. As a result, I am asking the city manager why city hall did not provide a faster response to Global’s request for information. I deeply regret what happened. My dogs are definitely part of the family, but like every responsible dog owner I know you cannot excuse a dog bite.”

Meantime, political rival Mike Starchuk, mayoral candidate for Imagine Surrey, issued a press release on September 13 noting that in January Annis had asked another dog owner to “step up” after that dog mauled another dog.

“Four months later it was her dog, and Surrey had to find out from a freedom of information request,” Starchuk stated in his press release. “That is the second FOI on Councillor Annis this year, after her texts to the police chief about drunk-driving checks outside the golf course in her neighbourhood, and she still won’t talk about her party’s Elections BC fine. Release the records. Answer the questions. The rules she votes on apply to her too.”

Annis told the Now-Leader she’s “done everything that I’ve been asked to do.”

“I’ve followed everything that Bylaws told me to do,” she said. She said once she paid the fine in June “they closed the file and they said it’s done.”

SOURCE: SURRY NOW LEADER