A DOG owner has been ordered to muzzle his collie after it launched an attack on a toddler in a York street and bit her leg.

The mother of the little girl who was left shocked and tearful by her ordeal says: “Hopefully this will stop the same thing happening to another child”.

Eve Stewart was walking past the dog, called Zac, with her then 22-month-old daughter Maddison in Byland Avenue, off Huntington Road, when it reached out and gripped her leg.

Moments earlier, the toddler had stroked an elderly black dog also owned by 54-year-old Peter West, who had been walking both animals and a spaniel.

The biting incident led to Mr West being prosecuted by City of York Council, with York magistrates hearing Eve claim in a statement read out by the council’s representative, Matt Boxall, that the spaniel was the only one of the three dogs on a lead.

“The man (Mr West) shouted at the dog (Zac) and hit it,” she said.

“He grabbed it by the collar – he didn’t have a lead for the dog. The man kept asking if the girl was all right – he apologised and told me the dog was just protecting a smaller dog, referring to the spaniel’.”

The attack left puncture wounds in Maddison’s leg, but Mr West claimed Zac was on an extendable lead, also saying he did not realize Maddison, who is now two, had been bitten and thought the collie had just snapped at her.

“I don’t feel I am 100 per cent to blame,” he said.

“When there is a chap with three dogs, you don’t walk towards them if you don’t know them.”

Mr West, of Byland Avenue, admitted not keeping Zac under proper control and magistrates made a dog control order with a condition for Zac to be muzzled in public, also ordering him to pay the council’s £236.49 costs.

Mr West told them that, since the incident, he and his wife no longer walked their dogs in the street, but took them to an open field instead, adding that Zac was always muzzled when not at home.

Eve told The Press Maddison’s love of dogs had been shaken by the attack, but had since returned and she had recovered from the experience. “It was awful – I wouldn’t wish what happened on anybody – but the court’s decision should stop this happening to other children,” she said. “Maddison didn’t try to stroke this dog and it was a completely unprovoked attack.”