NOVATO (KPIX) — A frightening dog attack in Novato left one animal fighting for its life. There is also a search for the two dogs responsible for the attack and their owner.

Isaias Garcia was walking his daughter’s dog Leo along a street in Novato when he noticed two pit bulls in a white SUV and crossed the road to avoid them. He was at the intersection of Chase and Plum streets when, he says, both pit bulls jumped out of an open window of the vehicle.

“They went right to the dog, right to the dog,” Garcia said.

Garcia desperately tried to kick the dogs off of Leo but didn’t have any success until a neighbor came to his aid. “Even me, I could not defend him, I was helpless,” Garcia recalled.

Garcia rushed Leo to an emergency room. That’s when his daughter Gaby Garcia first saw what happened to her dog.

“It almost seemed like he had a gunshot wound the bite was so profound,” Gaby Garcia said.

Leo was bit in the neck and chest and required surgery. Isaias Garcia had some scratches and bruises from a fall.

The Garcia family is thankful nobody else was hurt.

“We have children living here,” Gaby Garcia said. “If it was a child walking the dog, the child would be dead.”

The Garcias want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. They have surveillance footage of the white SUV leaving the scene and hope the community will come forward with information on the dogs’ owner.

As for pit bulls, Gaby Garcia said this: “I’m not against the breed but I am against the people that own the dogs and don’t train them properly.”

Leo is expected to be OK. If you have any information on this case you are asked to contact the Marin Humane Society at (415) 883-4621