Are pitbull owners smoking crack? why do they keep on insisting their dogs are cuddly furballs?

6-foot 3-inch, 300-pound Iraq war veteran mauled by Pit Bulls

The adversarial relationship between mail carriers and dogs is well-known.

But as two pit bulls tore relentlessly into Bryan Bloomquist's arms and legs outside a north Minneapolis house Tuesday, the mail carrier didn't think about clichés. He thought about dying.

"I had no fight left in me at that point," said Bloomquist, a 6-foot 3-inch, 300-pound Iraq war veteran said from his hospital bed Wednesday. "I thought it was over."

It almost was. Bloomquist, 31, of Mounds View, ended up with 41 wounds, which took hours of trauma surgery and stitching to close.

He said the dogs attacked him a good five minutes while neighbors tried beating them back with yard signs, a bat, even a car. Police eventually shot and killed the dogs when they charged officers who arrived at the scene in the 3300 block of Colfax Avenue N.

Minneapolis Animal Care and Control cited the dogs' owner, Otello Pitts, 48, for failure to license the dogs, failure to properly leash them and failure to vaccinate them for rabies, totaling $475 in fines.

Animal Control manager Dan Niziolek said he also could face criminal charges for harm caused by a dog. Records indicate officers have not had contact with the dogs or their owner in the past, Niziolek said.

A phone number for Pitts was not in service. No one answered the door at the house, which had a "Beware of Dog" sign in the window. Blood on a fence across the street showed where the dogs cornered Bloomquist and he slumped against it.

Neighbors say the dogs, each 9 months old, had occasionally run loose in the neighborhood but were not known to be aggressive toward people. Children lived in the house with them.

Bloomquist said he survived because of his size, his instincts and help from the people who heeded his screams.


[link to www.startribune.com]