Elderly man attacked by dogs

• 

  Ronnie Zorn’s dog bites almost three months after his June 9 attack. (Contributed photo)

  Ronnie Zorn’s dog bites almost three months after his June 9 attack. (Contributed photo)

On a Sunday evening as Ronnie Zorn pedaled home from his ritual of a bike ride to Hermanson’s Hall in Yorktown, two stray dogs attacked him.

He was almost home to his apartment on Eckhardt Street on June 9 when “a pretty peach-colored pit bull and little, hairy gray dog” attacked him, Zorn said.

“The big one got me on my right leg, and I got the bike between me and him,” he said, recalling the attack while monitoring his oxygen level from the oxygen machine in his apartment. “Then the little one got me on my left ankle.”

Zorn got to his apartment and called 911 for an ambulance as he wrapped his wounds to stop the bleeding.

“They said it looked like a murder scene,” Zorn said of the EMS that responded to his call. “I’m on blood thinners, and I bled everywhere.”

Zorn was transported to Citizens Hospital in Victoria for the first of three hospital visits over the summer related to the attack. “They stitched me up and sent me home,” he said.

The bite wounds did not heal and he had to undergo four days of IV antibiotics.

“The lady doctor in Victoria said there were three or four different bugs,” he said. “You hear about dogs having clean mouths, well I don’t believe that.” Zorn is also undergoing rabies shots. He said the first round of rabies shots are the worst. “They stick you with four or five right near the wound and it hurts like anything.”

He believes he saw the pit bull before his attack at a convenience store inside a truck. Zorn said he doesn't know the owner, but he has an idea of where the dogs live. He also said he had heard of kids getting bit as well.

“I like dogs,” he said. “I didn’t do anything to those dogs.”