TERRACE BAY — While a young boy continued to recover from the mauling he suffered at his Terrace Bay home last month, the six dogs involved in the attack were euthanized late Tuesday afternoon.
A family member confirmed that the procedures were performed at a veterinary clinic in Thunder Bay.
Six-year-old Bentley Larabee remains in a London, Ont., hospital for treatment of severe injuries inflicted by the rottweilers that attacked him while he and his four-year-old brother were playing on a trampoline on April 15.
He suffered multiple deep wounds, a broken arm, a small fracture in a vertebra and other injuries, and may require skin grafts.
The child's mother, Amanda Desmarais, told Dougall Media in an interview that his recovery is "coming along really really well ... he's talking and playing," and said she hopes he'll be able to come home later this month.
She said the dogs, which included two adult females and four pups under a year old, had never shown aggression before, and she's unsure what caused them to turn on her children after she let the animals out to pee.
"Something must have triggered in one of their heads, and they just started jumping from under the trampoline to push the kids off. One of them pulled Bentley down and that's when it happened."
Desmarais is thankful to Terrace Bay resident Sylvain Tessier, who heard the dogs barking and the children screaming, and went searching for the source of the commotion.
When he saw her struggling to save her son, he jumped a fence, putting his own safety in jeopardy to help rescue the family.
"Like I told him, I can't thank him enough for what he did that day. I mean, he saved my kid's life ... and my other son, because if he wasn't there I don't know what the outcome would have been with myself or with my two boys. He literally changed our lives that day," Desmarais said.
Tessier, who remains in regular contact with the family, established a GoFundMe campaign that has surpassed its goal of $10,000.
In his request for public support, he commented on Desmarais' relentless efforts to get the dogs away from her son, stating, "I witnessed the power and will of motherly love."
Terrace Bay Mayor Paul Malashewski said the community as a whole is also grateful to Tessier for jumping into the fray and helping to prevent an even worse result from the dogs' attack.
"Everyone is very thankful to him for what he did for the family and for the town, actually."
The incident has also sparked discussions about the adequacy of current municipal regulations regarding the keeping of animals.
At a closed-door meeting this week, council received an update "on what was going on with the dogs," Malashewski said. "We will be looking at reviewing our by-laws to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. There actually isn't a by-law that says you can't have 'x' amount of dogs on your property. We're going to review our options and see what we can come up with when the by-law committee meets."
According to Desmarais, the family hadn't intended to keep all the dogs after two litters of pups were born.
She said she and her partner were unable to sell them or get an animal rescue group to take them off their hands.
