The South African Dog Bites a Local High School Girl Suffered

Owning guard dogs is a common practice among South African families with money.

In the fall of 2010, a day before her birthday, Shawna Heilman was an exchange student near Johannesburg walking her host family’s dog. The gates of a nearby house opened while she was passing by, and a pair of dogs appeared—attacking the dog she was walking.

“I was trying to break them apart, and I got bit,” Shawna said. “It was a very traumatic event.”

It was the less serious of two bites she would suffer.

In February, Heilman was visiting a friend on a farm. She was only there for a few minutes when the dog came up to investigate. Heilman put her hand out to allow the dog to smell her when all of a sudden the animal attacked—biting her in the face.

Shawna's mom, Nancy, said she quickly received photos of the injuries.

"She was making friends with the dogs, letting them sniff her, when a Great Dane reached out and bit her on the face," Nancy Heilman said. "She had three puncture wounds and had to be taken to emergency and stitched up. Apparently, this Great Dane doesn't even like its owners. She posted some pictures the day it happened. Wow. She looked rough! She now has some mild scarring on the right side of her face, but it has healed. Scary stuff."

Today you have to look hard to see lasting damage.

“Even though that second dog bite was worse and I still have scars from it, I was fine with it and making jokes as I was getting these stitches in my face,” Shawna said. “But I had grown so much by that time that I was fine. Life happens and you deal with it. Things heal.”