LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Blankets line the floor where Nicole Huff's dog, Cooper, is recovering. He's covered in wounds, some of them still weeping, after a pack of four dogs attacked him last Friday evening.
"My dad and I always joke about our war wounds. So he's pretty proud of the bruising on this one," Huff said, gesturing down her gauze-wrapped arms.
Huff, a preschool teacher and a mother of two, was 24-weeks pregnant when the pack bit her as she tried protecting Cooper.
"I just jumped on my dog's back and kept my baby to his back," she said. "Took my right hand against his jugular, where they had a grip, and then just started kicking and hitting with my left, and screaming at the top of my lungs."
Terri Grimes is but one of many neighbors who answered Huff's call for help.
"I didn't see Cooper the dog at first, I just saw Nicole laying there being attacked by dogs," she said, taking WHAS11 back to where the attack happened. As the pack mauled the mother and her dog, Grimes tried to pull the dogs away.
Her husband even hit them with a shovel, but the pack wouldn't relent.
A neighbor's uncle, just driving by to deliver furniture, is who Grimes credits for ending the attack.
"At some point, he got on top of the alpha dog that had Cooper's throat in his mouth, and he subdued the alpha dog. That was the only that they were able to get him to release Cooper's neck."
It took the neighbor's uncle and another man piling on top of the dog to stop it. Another passerby helped them restrain the dog with rope and duct tape.
Screams and bloodshed left Grimes shaken, a feeling that subsided after she visited Huff Sunday morning and saw she was getting better. But she didn't come empty-handed.
"I thought, 'what's more comforting than homemade bread and pear butter?'" Grimes made the butter with some pears from the tree growing in her backyard.
Huff hasn't tried the cheddar bread, but her family has.
"Her homemade pear butter, oh my gosh, now that is amazing. I did have some of that," she said.
It's a small comfort shared between neighbors, but they also share a concern.
With the four dogs returned to their owner, Huff and Grimes worry they might get out again.
The owner had a similar situation happen in 2020. Back then, Louisville Metro Animal Services cited him because one of his dogs got loose and injured another.
Although injured and uncertain about the future, Huff is still giving thanks.
"We're grateful and thankful for all the little things, all the people that came, but [it's] definitely a week, that's for sure," she said.
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