Within 12 hours, a 73-year-old Dayton woman lost her daughter to illness, and then her best friend, 9-year-old poodle Rosie, to an attack by an aggressive dog.

Joyce Ford let out her three dogs, Rosie, Louis and Missy, around 6:45 a.m. Saturday into the fenced-in backyard of her home in the 200 block of Smith Road in Dayton.

Shortly after, she and her son, Shawn Montague, said they heard a lot of barking outside.

“We looked out the window and we saw a great pit pull that was trying to break up under neath the fence. The dog actually got up underneath the fence, grabbed the dog and ripped the dog to pieces,” Montague said. “It was a terrible thing to see.”

Montague and his mother tried to save Rosie, but to no avail. He grabbed the dog’s tail and flung it, but it wouldn’t dislodge.

“My mom got a screwdriver and tried to stab the dog in the back and the screwdriver broke,” he said. “The other dogs were trying to attack the pit bull so I tried to grab them up so they wouldn’t get attacked, too.”

When he saw the dogs insides spilled out, he turned to his mother and told her to go inside, that her dog is gone.

Witnesses helped to get the dog secured and chained to a pole.

This is a difficult time for his mother, Montague said.

“Right now, she’s making arrangements to bury my sister and on top of that she loses her best friend ... and then, the way it happened. I didn’t want to her to witness it but when she saw it, it was devastating,” he said.

When Dayton police officers arrived, they found the pit bull chained to a fence post with “blood on the pit bull’s mouth, jawline area and on the chest area, where there was a white patch of fur,” according to an incident report. It also stated the dog barked at a small child who came outside a nearby residence and “began to aggressively bark towards the child and tried to break loose from the chain.”

According to a Dayton police report, a 27-year-old woman at the house where the pit bull lives said the dog belongs to her ex-boyfriend but that she lets the dog stay at her home.

That dog and the deceased poodle were taken by police to the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center.

Director Mark Kumpf said the pit bull is being held at ARC pending the Dayton police investigation and location of its owner.

No one has been cited in the incident.

Got a tip? Call our monitored 24-hour line, 937-259-2237, or send it to newsdesk@cmgohio.com.