Victim's Family Talks About Dog Attack

The family of a young girl attacked by dogs is talking about the attack for the first time.

Madisyn Shelton, 3, suffered more than 50 dog bites while playing in her family's front yard on Stone Road in Semmes.

The attack happened last Thursday. Madisyn's mom, Jennifer Shelton, was the first to find her.

"If you saw her you wouldn't have been able to realize that was a child laying there on the ground," said Jennifer Shelton, who was inside her house doing paperwork for her four year old son's baseball team when she realized Madisyn had wandered outside to play with her new Dora The Explorer's ball. "I was just hollering Maddi, Maddi talk to mama," recalls Shelton. "She was just so lifeless in my arms."

Jennifer Shelton lives next door to her mother and her grandmother. She says she always felt safe living on the same road where she grew up and never imagined something like this would happen.

Shelton insists her neighbor's two labrador retrievers and blue heeler are responsible for the attack.

Madisyn was rushed to USA Children's and Women's Hospital were she received 161 stitches.

District Attorney John Tyson filed a civil lawsuit against the dogs' owner Wednesday using the state's new dangerous dog ordinance.

The dogs are quarantined at the Mobile County Animal Shelter. If a judge determines the dogs are dangerous, they will be euthanized.