She’s walked the nearly two-mile route from her home on Carey Boulevard to downtown Hutchinson "a hundred times", said Tina Stapleton.

"It’s the first time I was attacked by a dog," said the 55-year-old Hutchinson native, speaking from her bed a Hutchinson Regional Medical Center where she’s recovering from several severe bite wounds she suffered in such an attack Monday afternoon.

It was a nice day, Stapleton said, so she decided to walk to City Hall to pay her water bill.

The first time she walked by the house at 523 E. Ave. A, a pair of dogs secured in a wire kennel in the front yard barked at her, but she wasn’t concerned because the pen looked sturdy and secure, she said.

After paying her bill, she visited the hardware store and stopped for lunch at R&B Drive-In. Then she headed home, again along Avenue A.

"This time when I walked by the same house, a dog was out," Stapleton said. "It was coming out on the sidewalk. I ordered them to stop and started backing up. I backed into the street. Then one came running at me in a beeline."

As she attempted to climb on a car in the street, the dogs bit her legs, Stapleton said, attacking her from behind. She believes both dogs bit her.

A couple in a van pulled up and asked if she needed help, causing the dogs to briefly back away.

"At that time I turned around and one (dog) grabbed me by the arm," she said.

The driver of the van then jumped out, grabbed a 2- to 3-foot long stick from the street and drove the dogs back.

A neighbor, who Stapleton said identified himself as a retired police officer, then ran over to assist and called 911.

The first man held the dogs at bay in a yard until officers arrived.

"If that guy hadn’t stopped, it would have been a lot worse," she said.

Stapleton doesn’t know the name of her savior.

She suffered wounds to the front and back of both lower legs, her left thigh and left wrist. The worst injury was about a 4- to 5-inch gash to her left calf which was bleeding so severely officers on the scene applied a tourniquet to her leg.

Her heavy coat, she said, prevented more severe injury to her arm.

Stapleton, listed in fair condition, took a brief turn around the hall of the orthopedic wing at the hospital Tuesday morning, her legs swathed in heavy bandages.

She had no clue how many stitches she received.

One of the dogs had a record of vaccination, but she wasn’t certain on the second. Both are in quarantine at the Hutchinson Animal Shelter.

She never saw the owner of the dogs until police had arrived and, when one of the dogs charged an officer, it was shot. The man then came running out, apparently from a back yard, yelling at the officer "you didn’t have a right to shoot my dog," Stapleton said.

"His dogs didn’t have a right to attack a person," she said. "It could have been a little girl they attacked."

The dog owner, Ismael Rojas, was arrested on suspicion of aggravated battery, causing great bodily harm.

Stapleton thought that the dogs were let out of the pen by someone, that they didn’t escape.

"It looked like a sturdy, strong pen," she said.

A professed cat person whose last two cats have lived beyond 20 years, Stapleton said she won’t own a dog.

"Now I’m absolutely certain," she said. "I was a little timid of them. Now, I’ll go way around."

She also plans, Stapleton said, to pay her water bill online.