Sean Lowe of “The Bachelor” experienced something “pretty traumatic” in recent days when the family’s beloved new dog attacked him not once but twice, leaving significant wounds on both of his arms.
In a video posted Monday, days after the attacks, Lowe still seemed rattled by the events that had unfolded around Moose, the adult Boxer who joined the family in January. Wife Catherine Lowe, née Giudici, sat almost silently at his side as he told the story. Both seemed emotional.
Sean Lowe said friends had come over Thursday for a barbecue while Catherine took the kids to the mall. It was a nice night in Dallas, so he had the doors and windows open and some smoke drifted into the house, setting off the smoke alarm. Lowe said he grabbed a dishrag and tried to wave the smoke away from the smoke detector — only to have Moose start nipping at the rag and at his finger “aggressively.” That behavior was unusual for the dog.
“I kind of gave him a ‘No, Moose’ and again the siren’s just blaring,” Lowe said. “Then he goes and starts to bite my feet. He’s kind of done this before — if you have a herding dog, you’re probably familiar with this, where they kind of nip the heels, but he never really bites.
“Well, he was biting my feet so hard he actually put holes in my shoes and it was hurting my feet. So at this point, again, there’s so much chaos going on with the alarm going off, I give him a very stern, like, ‘Moose, no! No!’ And it was right about that moment when he shows his teeth at me and just attacks me,” he said.
“And I don’t mean like bite and run off, like a lot of dogs do when they’re scared or defensive. I mean, attacks me. I feel him just kind of ripping into the flesh of my arm, and at this point I am doing everything I possibly can just to fend this dog off.”
He managed to get Moose out the door and into the yard, but the dog rushed back in and attacked him again.
Lowe said he was confused. “We’ve only had him for a little under three months,” he said, “but he’s my dog. I walk him. If I run errands, he goes in the truck with me. When I get out of my chair, my kids don’t like it because he follows me, he doesn’t follow them. Like, it’s my dog. All he has ever wanted was affection.”
He noted that he had taken some video earlier that day when Moose put his head in Lowe’s lap and “just wanted to be pet.”
“So it was so bizarre — like, why is my dog, who I know loves me, attacking me so aggressively?” Lowe said.
The group managed to get Moose back outside, but Lowe thought the dog might have nicked an artery in his arm, which was “squirting” blood, he said. “We have the video [from security cameras] — the video’s way too violent, I’m not going to share that. But you hear me saying, ‘This is serious, you’ve got to get me to a hospital. Call Catherine.’”
At the emergency room, Lowe got stitched up. But all the while, he said, he struggled to reconcile what had just happened with his lovely experiences as Moose’s dad. He said he was confused and heartbroken.
Lowe said he contacted the local animal control office and talked to a helpful and understanding officer. He contacted the rescue group that facilitated the adoption. Arrangements were made, though Lowe didn’t get into specifics about Moose’s fate.
The morning after the first attack, Lowe said he was in the front yard with his parents, who he said were going to help with the kids while the adults dealt with the dog. When wind blew the front door open, Lowe said he saw Moose running out the door again, even as his wife shouted, “No no no no.”
“Going through a dog attack is pretty darn traumatic,” Lowe said in the video. “Having to relive it less than 12 hours later, seeing that dog running straight at you, is a feeling I don’t think I ever want to experience again.”
Moose lunged and Lowe called out for help. With great effort, he wrestled the dog to the ground. He held Moose’s collar until the police arrived.
“I just know that I’m just fighting for my life here,” he said. “I feel like, if this dog gets up, he is going to kill me.”
After two trips to the emergency room, Lowe’s arms were covered with bruises and many stitches. One wound — the one that had been squirting blood — went almost the width of his forearm.
The kids saw the attack this time, as did Catherine. Sean said that if they had been attacked instead of him, a 220-pound man, Moose “would have killed them.”
“I don’t blame Moose a bit,” he said. “It wasn’t Moose’s fault. I think it’s clear he experienced a lot of trauma before we got him.” And whatever happened, he said, something in the smoke alarm “flipped this switch” in Moose. The people with the rescue group told him they were unaware of the events in the dog’s life that would have led to this.
“We’re torn up about it,” Lowe said. “We really are. We miss our dog … he was a really, really good dog. And we miss him.”
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