“Severely traumatised” is how a Port Elizabeth woman described her feelings after she was left with no choice but to shoot dead her neighbour's dogs.

On Thursday morning, the two pit bulls scaled Yvonne van der Watt’s 2m wall on Bangor Street, Sherwood, and attacked her three-year-old mixed-breed dog, Bruno.

When a desperate Van der Watt (73) tried to drive the pit bulls off Bruno, the dogs turned their ferocity on her and her brother-in-law, Egbert Schlodder, 68, who rushed outside the house when he heard what he described as an intense commotion.

Schlodder used a sjambok to try to separate the dogs.