An Alberta woman is thanking her neighbour after she stepped in and rescued her seven-year-old daughter from a loose dog that was attacking a group of children as they waited for a school bus.

Barbara Smith says her daughter Isabella was left with marks on her head and shoulder after the attack, and she believes the injuries would have been much worse if not for her neighbour, Diane Chavoyer.

“If it wasn’t for her, my daughter would have no face,” Smith said, recounting the incident outside her home near St. Paul.

Chavoyer says she was waiting with her two young children when the dog ran up to several children and started “nipping at every kid it could find.”

She said the dog “grabbed a kid and shook her, grabbed another kid and shook her,” Chavoyer says she held her own kids behind her, but then saw Isabella on the ground and ran to the rescue.

“I just seen blood coming down her face and her blonde hair turned red,” Chavoyer said.

“I thought she was dead.”

Chavoyer says she punched and kicked the dog but it would not let go. Eventually, she roared like “a momma bear” and chased the dog away, she says.

The dog’s owner says she’s “extremely upset” about what happened, but that her dog Bingo is just “jumpy” and that he “wanted to play.”

The owner said she has been issued a $250 bylaw fine in relation to the incident.

With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Angela Jung