The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office seized four dogs Saturday and cited their owner for an April 7 attack on a neighbor and his dog near Redmond that seriously injured both, a sheriff’s captain said.

The dogs are Akitas, described as large and powerful by the American Kennel Club. They attacked a couple from the Tetherow Crossing subdivision walking their Australian shepherd on public land northwest of Redmond, said Bob Wilson, owner of Jodi, the shepherd.

“She’s pretty beat up,” he said recently. “She’s getting a little better every day.”

The April attack was the latest in a series of incidents involving the same animals, said sheriff’s Capt. Shane Nelson. Deputies had cited their owner, Brett Hodgson, of Northwest 69th Place, Tetherow Crossing, twice since December for violating county code on loose and nuisance dogs. The criminal citations Saturday marked a step up in severity.

Nelson said Hodgson, who cooperated with deputies who arrived around 1 p.m. to take his animals, faces four counts of maintaining a dangerous dog and one of reckless endangerment. All are Class A misdemeanors. The dogs were seized as evidence under a search warrant and taken to BrightSide Animal Shelter, Redmond, he said.

“What happened to us shouldn’t happen to anybody,” Wilson said Sunday. “Until they were seized, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.”

On April 7, the 8-year-old shepherd suffered 20 puncture wounds and a lacerated stomach, Wilson said. He said an Akita bit his hand down to a bone that required a screw to reset and heal. “It bit me so hard, I let out a scream so loud, my wife said she never heard me make such a loud noise in my life,” Wilson said. “It tore it open pretty bad.”

Wilson said the bite occurred as he covered his dog with his own body to shield it from the larger animals.

“There’s no question in my mind I saved her life,” he said.

At the time, Hodgson was cited for dogs at large and animal nuisance, one count each for each dog for a total of eight, Nelson said. All are county code violations. The dogs were held for a rabies check and returned to Hodgson, a routine procedure, Nelson said.

He said the Akitas in December attacked a border collie, and in January they chased a woman in her car into her driveway.

Efforts by The Bulletin to contact Hodgson for comment at his home were unsuccessful.

During its investigation after April 7, the sheriff’s office heard of other, unreported incidents involving the Akitas, including one in which a third dog was attacked and required stitches, Nelson said. He said the sheriff’s report of the April incident is headed this time for the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office.

“This is kind of a unique situation,” he said Friday.

Seizing the dogs as evidence allowed the sheriff’s office to remove the animals as a matter of public safety, he said. Their fate depends upon the outcome of the case against Hodgson: “There are so many options, it just kinda depends on how the criminal case works out and what’s worked out when the case is adjudicated. Our main concern is for public safety,” Nelson said.

Wilson said that around 9 a.m. April 7, he and his wife, Garnet Wilson, took Jodi for a walk on Northwest Homestead Way and along a road through Bureau of Land Management property. “Well, I saw the dogs running toward Jodi, and immediately it hit me that these must be the dogs I was warned about. Two of them were on Jodi before I even got there,” Wilson said.

The Akitas’ owner appeared and restrained two of the animals, which each weighed 100-110 pounds, he said. His dog, he said, weighs about half that.

Wilson said he retired in March 2012 from a career in environmental public health, in which he worked at various times for Crook, Wasco and Benton counties and for 15 years in Corvallis. Among his responsibilities: quarantining dogs that had bitten people to check for rabies.

“We moved out here (from Redmond) for the country life,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to get attacked by dogs.”

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office asks that anyone in the Tetherow Crossing subdivision with information about four Akitas running loose there call the Sheriff’s Office at 541-693-6911.