Pit bull chases puppy into house

Door to door, the two houses stand about 30 paces from each other at the end of a cul-de-sac.

People in the Evans neighborhood -- in the 3400 block of Riesling Court -- have backyards and big living rooms. Unfinished houses sit in various stages of construction. Pam McChesney ran screaming through her home here, scared a neighbor's pit bull would kill her son's puppy. In the struggle, one of the dogs sliced her hand. The puppy suffered lacerations on a leg. McChesney said she can't get the violent scene out of her head.

Two doors down, the pit bull, Diesel, sits chained in the basement of his owner's house: 10 days mandatory quarantine. He's tall and black and, the owner said, a perfect pet for his children. Doug Willis has two pit bulls and three children, ages 5, 10 and 13. As a baby, the youngest rode the dogs around the house like a horse, Willis said. He can't understand what happened last week.

About 6:15 p.m. Friday, McChesney prepared to leave for a friend's house when she saw Willis' children near the side of her garage. She tried to open a side door to the outside pen where she knew Oakley, a 9-month old German shepherd and husky mix, had been.

"I could hear the dog growl," McChesney said.

Outside, Diesel had broken his collar and jumped McChesney's fence. Oakley and Diesel burst through the dog door, raced through the garage past McChesney and through another dog door into McChesney's living room. McChesney grabbed Diesel but couldn't hold on.

The dogs fought in the kitchen. Diesel clamped onto Oakley's leg. Willis' son sprayed Diesel with water from a sink hose. McChesney reached into the middle, then pulled her hand back with a wound that would require four stitches. She began to hit Diesel with a dog bone, and Willis' son eventually was able to get the dog out the back door.

"If I would have been here two minutes later," McChesney said, "we would have had dead dogs in this house."

Willis said the event was horrible. He never wants McChesney to feel the way she did that day again. He said he would pay the medical bills for her hand and Oakley's leg. If McChesney thinks Willis should, he'll put Diesel down. But Diesel never attacked McChesney, Willis said; she put her hand in the middle of a dogfight.

Evans police cited Willis for owning a nuisance animal. Diesel wasn't classified as a vicious dog, Sgt. Gary Kessler said, because he attacked Oakley, not McChesney.

Willis worries the incident will create a rift between the families. He said McChesney's husband, Joe Thorburn had come to his house, yelled at him and called him an unfit parent for owning pit bulls.

McChesney wonders if Greeley should ban pit bulls, but she said Willis seemed genuinely concerned after the incident. She told a Tribune reporter on the phone that she hoped Thorburn could let it go.

Willis said he didn't want this to turn into "Hatfields and McCoys." Their driveways are talking distance apart at the end of the same street.

"I've got the bad feeling that's not going to happen," he said, "and that sucks, because we live in a cul-de-sac."

Tribune reporter Roxye Arellano contributed to this report.