Kevon Felmine

Preg­nant Point Fortin moth­er Kurleen Coop­er, 36, who is still in pain af­ter dogs at­tacked her last month, plans to take le­gal ac­tion against the dogs' own­er. She said she would meet with her at­tor­ney next week to dis­cuss a civ­il suit against her neigh­bour, the dogs' own­er.

Speak­ing at her moth­er's Mor­ris Street, Point Fortin home yes­ter­day Coop­er said she was gath­er­ing doc­u­ments, such as the po­lice and med­ical re­ports and pho­tographs. She said the mem­o­ries of the dogs bit­ing her still lin­gered, and that was why she was seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for her life­time scars. She added: "I have to do some­thing, I can't take it like that. I am go­ing to speak with my at­tor­ney be­cause I am in re­al pain and dis­com­fort.

"My mom has to wash my chil­dren's and my clothes and I can't even comb my daugh­ter's hair." On May 14, Coop­er was at­tacked by three dogs, in­clud­ing a pit bull, which es­caped from their own­er's premis­es. She was re­turn­ing to her South Cen­tral Road home af­ter drop­ping her chil­dren at the near­by Salazar Trace Pri­ma­ry School. She sus­tained blood loss and flesh wounds to her hand, head, legs and gen­i­tal area.

On June 10, she was re­leased from the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where she had un­der­gone surgery to save her right arm. Gri­mac­ing in pain as she spoke, the six-month preg­nant woman said she was dis­heart­ened at the lev­el of crit­i­cism of the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act. She said some ac­tivists were act­ing as if the an­i­mals were more im­por­tant than peo­ple.

She called for the speedy im­ple­men­ta­tion of the law, say­ing she would not like an­oth­er per­son to suf­fer as she had done. How­ev­er, she urged own­ers not to aban­don their dogs. Re­call­ing the painful or­deal, Coop­er said: "It was fright­en­ing and it should not have hap­pened. Right about now I am go­ing through some pain that I don't de­serve.

"But I thank God my chil­dren were not there when it hap­pened and that I had dropped them off where they were safe. "Since I came here, my daugh­ter, Jah­mi­ah, keeps kiss­ing me but Jesse (her son) stares at my scars." She said while she re­mained in a lot of pain she was hap­py her un­born child was do­ing well.

Coop­er said she had to at­tend phys­io­ther­a­py ses­sions and the on­ly med­ica­tion that was rec­om­mend­ed for her was vi­t­a­mins and co­coa but­ter to help heal her scars. Coop­er's moth­er, Bernadette Coop­er, said she had made sev­er­al un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to con­tact Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who promised as­sis­tance in pro­vid­ing a house for her daugh­ter.

Dur­ing a tour of his Oropouche East con­stituen­cy last month, Mooni­lal de­scribed Coop­er's house as "four pieces of ply­board" and said once the fam­i­ly re­quest­ed help he would be will­ing to as­sist. Speak­ing, with a smile on her face, Coop­er said: "Well, I am wait­ing to see what my min­is­ter have for me, what he promised me. Right about now, I am keep­ing faith that some­thing good will hap­pen."