PEMBROKE – Two dogs remained quarantined in Ellsworth on Tuesday after they allegedly attacked and bit an 8-year-old Perry girl and then one of them turned on the animal control officer and bit him while he was helping move the dogs to isolation.

According to Pembroke Animal Control Officer Lester Seeley, Emily Davis, 8, of Perry was on a day trip with a church group on July 8 when the group’s van stopped at the residence of Jamie Lank of Little Falls Road in Pembroke.

Emily went to the door to get one of the Lank children to go on the trip, Seeley said.

“When she opened the door the dogs came out and charged her, knocking her down on the ground and biting her in the face and on the back,” Seeley said.

Emily’s brother Timothy Davis, 9, saw what was happening to his sister and intervened.

“He ran over and grabbed the two dogs by the back of their neck and pulled them off his sister and got her up and got her into the van,” Seeley said.

Emily was taken to Calais Regional Hospital with “bad bites,” the animal control officer said.

Seeley said that if Timothy Davis had not stepped in, Emily could have been hurt more seriously.

He called the boy a hero.

“He has a lot of gumption for a young kid,” Seeley said.

The dogs were taken to the Ellsworth Animal Shelter where they remained quarantined Tuesday.

Seeley said he has since spoken with the girl and her brother.

“She wrote out her own statement,” he said. “She is good, but she is very leery of dogs, even her own dogs, which I can understand.”

Seeley said Tuesday that one of the dogs bit him on the hand, drawing a small amount of blood, when he and two others were trying to remove the dogs from the cage on the back of his truck while transporting them to Ellsworth.

“He bit me on the back,” Seeley said. “He didn’t puncture my skin, but he did draw blood … just through the skin.”

Neither dog – one a pit bull and the other a crossbreed with pit bull in it – was licensed, Seeley said. Only the pit bull had had its rabies and distemper shots.

Seeley said Jamie Lank had been warned before about controlling her dogs.

“I have had complaints on her dogs. Now the question is [have the complaints been] on these dogs? I don’t know, because she has had dogs and gotten rid of them and got different dogs,” he said.

In 2000, Jamie Moores, now Lank, and Aaron Lank, her husband, were ordered by the 4th District Court in Calais to euthanize their black chow-Shar-Pei after another dog-biting incident.

“You are hereby ordered that if the black chow-Shar-Pei mixed breed known as ‘Fat Head’ is returned to your ownership, you must take the animal to an animal shelter or veterinarian to be destroyed as a dangerous animal,” the court document said.

Seeley delivered his report on the July 8 incident and pictures of the girl’s bites to First Assistant District Attorney Paul Cavanaugh on Tuesday.

Cavanaugh said Tuesday he would read the report today. He said he would like to have the case before a judge before the quarantine ends Friday.

Among the possible charges is keeping dangerous dogs.

Contacted Tuesday night, Jamie Lank confirmed that her dogs had been quarantined, but denied they had bitten the child. “Until I receive documentation that any dogs bit, I am going to go with ‘no,'” she said. “Allegedly it was only one dog,” she added.

Asked what happened, Lank said she would prefer to speak with her attorney first. “I can’t really have input,” she said. “I am not trying to be rude.”

She also denied that her dogs are vicious, as was reported in an account of the incident published July 11 in the local bimonthly newspaper Quoddy Tides.

“If you got a little boy grabbing two dogs off why wouldn’t the dogs turn around and bite him?” she asked. Lank again said she would prefer to speak with her attorney before commenting further.

Lank’s husband, Aaron, said both his dogs were mutts, not pit bulls.

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