Reading your news item “Warning to dog owners after attack” (Free Press February 9) brought me up with a jolt.

I saw that it was about a sheep attack in Luccombe and am glad to see the poor animal was at least not killed.

What I honestly expected to read was something like this, as horrid as the above obviously is.

Walking near Nutcombe Bottom, Dunster, on the previous Monday to your paper coming out, with our friends and their dog, a collie-cross of medium build, we came up on a German Shepherd dog, with presumably its lady owner, trotting along a little further behind.

Her dog came up to Alfie, who had time to wag his tail for one-and-a-half wags in a friendly greeting, and, with no warning, was then pitched in to by this brute and flung around like a rag doll, not once but twice, as our poor dog tried to make his escape.

The viciousness of the attack I have never seen in many, many years of dog walking and thought, as five of us tried our best to stop this horrible spectacle from becoming fatal, that poor Alfie, with not a bad bone in his body, was really going to be a goner.

We managed to get the dog off and told the woman, as kindly as we could, to leave with her beast, as she seemed as shocked as we were at her dog’s behaviour, saying it had never done anything like this before.

We noticed she had no lead or muzzle for it, so maybe this was a first. If so, I hope she has already done something about it, for this dog is going to cause a tragedy if it attacks again in a similar manner.

A smaller dog with a thinner coat of hair, I am quite convinced, would have been surely killed.

We have met a few doggy-troublemakers on our walks, where often the owners seem as rude as the dogs, but in this case, it was not so.   

So my own warning to dog walkers is this – beware a large black\brown German Shepherd dog, walking some way ahead of its owner, with nothing to delay its approach and seemingly immune to any re-call.  

Ros Robinson, Lydeard St Lawrence.