A FAMILY has been left distraught after its much-loved Jack Russell was brutally savaged by a pair of marauding dogs who invaded the front garden.

Six-year-old Boggie has been fighting for her life at a local vets following the attack in Waterside Fold, East Morton, late on Monday afternoon.

Caroline Fallis-Taylor and her husband, Michael, who have two young children, have appealed to other dog walkers in the area to be alert to the danger.

Mrs Fallis-Taylor, 31, said Boggie was attacked at about 3pm by two identical dark grey Bedlington Terrier type dogs who ran into her garden by crossing a small stream which separates the garden from a field.

She said: "The terrier dogs were running off the lead with their owner nowhere in sight, when they dragged my helpless dog into the stream and began to savagely rip into her. I was terrified.

"We rushed Boggie to the local vets in Keighley where she is undergoing lifesaving treatment at a cost of over £600 and still going up.

"We need to make people aware of these dogs in the area, and also to try and get the owner to keep his dogs under control before it happens to a child."

Mr Fallis-Taylor, 41, said the attack only stopped when a man who said he had been walking nearby ran up and managed to call the terriers off.

He added: "By that time Boggie was nearly lifeless and covered in blood.

"She is still in the vets at the moment and is very ill. She must have about 150 bites on her and they didn't think she was going to make it. It is touch and go, though hopefully she'll pull through.

"The vets have been fantastic. They took her in straight away and put her on a drip. Fortunately it seems none of her internal organs have been punctured, which would probably have been fatal.

"Her wounds are being flushed out, but she won't recover quickly. It'll be a long process.

"We have two other dogs and Boggie is very much a member of our family. She's a tiny dog, and we've had her since she was a few weeks old.

"The dogs that attacked her were pedigree dogs, so they would not have been strays. We've seen them in the area before.

"A lot of other people walk their dogs close to where we live and we don't want this happening to anyone else."