JEANNETTE (KDKA) — A 2-and-a-half-year-old Yorkshire Terrier named Murphy is recovering after he was mauled earlier this month near a city park in Jeannette.

The dog’s owner, Marybeth Levy, of South Park, was at the airport preparing to take a flight to Europe when she got an urgent call from her girlfriend in Jeannette who had agreed to watch her dogs while she was away.

Levy told KDKA-TV that her friend was devastated when she told her that her dog needed emergency surgery and might not make it after it was attacked by an American Bulldog who had crawled beneath a tennis court fence and attacked Murphy.

“The bulldog had my friend’s dog by its abdomen and was biting it in the middle like it was a hoagie,” Alice Lang, who was caring for Murphy, said. “I mean I can’t even describe it any other way. He was shaking him around and I stood there – I was just screaming.”

Lang said at first, the couple who showed up at the park with the bulldog accepted responsibility for the attack, but then they disappeared.

Lang says they took her phone number, but she hasn’t heard from them. She said they were in an older model, white Jeep Cherokee Sport.

The woman was described as a tall, white and in her 20s with bleach blond hair. Her companion was light-skinned African American male, about six-feet tall with tattoos on at least one upper arm.

After two surgeries to repair deep chest wounds, Murphy’s vet bills have topped $4,500.

Jeannette police are investigating the attack.

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