After three hours of emotional testimony, two dogs accused of seriously injuring a Deschutes County woman last month won a reprieve — at least temporarily — because of questions over whether the wrong dog was jailed.

A 7-year-old tan-and-white male boxer named Marshall and a 1.5-year-old brindled female boxer named Brandy have been held at Humane Society since mid-March, since Jason Blomgren identified them as the dogs who attacked his neighbor, Joy Stanovich-Brown. But the dogs’ owner, Jean Straight, argued during a hearing in front of the county’s dog control board that the guilty female dog was actually a different brindled female boxer whose name she and her husband, Dave, both refused to spell.

“We know something happened,” Dave Straight said. “We’ll give up the two dogs that did it. We don’t want to give up an innocent dog.”

Stanovich-Brown, Blomgren, Straight, a sheriff’s deputy and Straight’s other dogs will visit the humane society Wednesday so Blomgren and Stanovich-Brown can identify the animal, and the dog control board will meet again within the next couple of weeks to decide whether the dogs need to be euthanized.

Stanovich-Brown cried while describing the attack and gestured as if she were reliving her attempts to fight off the dogs. Her husband, Ian, kept a hand on her hand or leg as she cried, his lips trembling at times as she talked.

On a Monday morning in March, she walked her 11-year-old Chihuahua mix on a leash to the mailbox at the end of her driveway on Groff Road in rural Deschutes County east of Bend.

She said two boxers ran from the Straights’ property, which is kitty-corner to Stanovich-Brown’s land, and attacked her, knocking her to the ground and breaking her dog’s leash and harness.

One dog bit her left arm through a thick coat, while the other grabbed the Chihuahua, Stanovich-Brown said.

She said she punched Marshall to get him away and tried to hold her dog close to protect her.

“Then he grabbed my ankle, and he bit so hard, and he shook and he just shredded my ankle,” she said. “I was screaming, and my little dog was screaming, and then I just told my little dog, ‘It’s going to be OK. I’m going to fight.’”

The dogs ripped the hood from her coat and then yanked on her fleece hat, causing its string to scrape her neck. One dog tore the hat off, leaving scratches on the top of her head.

“I thought I was gonna die, and I just prayed for somebody to come and save me,” she said. “And then I heard something, and it was Jason yelling at me ‘Get up, get up, get in the car.’”

Blomgren was driving by at the time and saw Stanovich-Brown on her hands and knees with one dog attacking her ankles and another tearing her hat from her head, he testified Tuesday. He jumped out to help, and Marshall ran around the front of the car to him.

“He’s sitting there just panting, and he’s got blood all over his mouth,” Blomgren said. “I’ll never forget it.”

Once both of them were in the car, Blomgren called 911 while the dogs “circled like a couple of sharks.” He tried driving down Stanovich-Brown’s driveway, but the dogs chased after them, he said.

He turned around and drove nearly three-quarters of a mile from Stanovich-Brown’s house. One dog continued chasing his SUV until he turned right, and paramedics met them farther down the road.

Stanovich-Brown was taken in an ambulance to St. Charles Bend, where she received stitches. Her ankle was fractured because a dog tooth chipped off a portion of the bone, and she just started physical therapy.

Stanovich-Brown’s husband brought her dog to the veterinarian to be seen for injuries. The Chihuahua is physically fine, Stanovich-Brown said, but she’s become jumpy and nervous since the incident.

Blomgren met Deschutes County Sheriff’s Deputy Bryan Morris at Straight’s home and identified the two attacking dogs as Marshall and Brandy. Straight breeds boxers and had 12 on her property at the time, and she said she lets four dogs out at a time to run around in her fenced yard. She does not have a kennel license.

Neither Marshall nor Brandy was licensed in Deschutes County, but they did have updated vaccine records, except for their rabies vaccines.

Morris cited Straight on two counts each of animal nuisance, animal at large and possessing an unlicensed dog. The citations were dismissed pending the dog board hearing but could be reissued.

Morris found blood on Marshall’s fur, on the dirt and pavement where Stanovich-Brown was attacked and on the passenger floorboard of Blomgren’s SUV, he testified Tuesday.

While the fence on the east side of Straight’s property appeared able to contain the dogs, the north side of the fence was only four strands of wire stretched between poles and didn’t seem like it could contain the boxers, Morris said. Straight says the fence is five strands and electrified, and that she’s improved the fence since the attack.

After the incident, Morris said the sheriff’s office heard from several other people who called in to report that they’d had contact with Straight’s dogs over several years.

The sheriff’s office only had records of one previous call, which came from Straight’s next-door neighbor, Cynthia Vernarecci, in the summer of 2016. Vernarecci said she was walking her own dogs when one of Straight’s boxers got out through the north fence and ran at her, jumping and biting. A neighbor driving by rescued her, Vernarecci said.

Vernarecci said the boxers chase children on bikes, and other neighbors said they avoid walking or biking by the Straights’ fence.

“I just want to be able to walk to get my mail, walk my dogs, and not be afraid,” Vernarecci said.

Vernarecci’s husband, Bruce, took a firmer approach, telling the dog board that if the Straights get their dogs back and didn’t control them, he’d take matters into his own hands.

“If I walk down Groff by myself and I get attacked by some dogs, I will kill them, right off the bat,” he said.

—  Reporter: 541-633-2160; jshumway@bendbulletin.com