By Kim Hilsenbeck

Two dogs are now in the San Marcos Animal Shelter after Kyle Police Department’s Animal Control division captured them Thursday in connection with an attack on two other dogs.

Diane Martinez, who lives off Old Hwy. 81 in Kyle, said her dogs, Slushie and Toasty, both 14-year-old lab mixes, were killed by what she believes are two pit bull mix dogs. She said those dogs were outside her front gate Monday morning, growling at her and trying to find a way into the gate.

“On Monday morning, I left at ten of six for work,” Martinez said.

She owns a daycare facility that sits at the front of her property.

“I went to unlock the gate and saw two pit bulls outside my gate. I had to quickly push the gate to get it shut.”

Martinez felt the dogs were trying to get at her and said she heard growling.

“I shooed them away, but one was still trying to get at me,” she said.

All of this happened barely a day after her family’s dogs were killed in what she described as a canine attack, though no one witnessed it.

“Toasty (the tan one) had to be put down on Sunday,” Martinez said. “[The dog] just had too many injuries to survive.”

Her daughter found Toasty laying down inside its kennel Monday morning.

“He wouldn’t move,” her daughter told her on the phone.

Martinez was at Brackenridge Medical Center in Austin Sunday night and Monday morning because on Sunday, Martinez’s own dogs had shown aggression toward her mother, who is 80.

“It was a nightmare of a weekend,” Martinez said. “My mom and I came home, I thought dogs were in kennel. Both dogs came running out from under carport and got my mom. I don’t think they were attacking us, I think they were trying to get her off the property. Once she fell, they left.”

That incident left her mother with a broken wrist and some lacerations. They initially worried her nose was broken.

“They’ve never, ever, ever hurt anybody like that,” Martinez said. She added that Kyle Animal Control Officer Salas told her the dogs may not have been attacking to hurt.

“They may have been trying to warn us,” she said Salas told her.

About what?

About the roaming dogs that were trying to get onto her property.

Martinez said Salas came out Monday morning when her daughter called. By this time, the dog was out of the kennel and under a van in the driveway.

The dog suffered numerous injuries.

Salas tried to get her to come out.

He gently pulled her out using the loop tool around her neck.

“We thought somebody stabbed her,” Martinez said. “Salas thought the same thing, but then saw her legs were chewed up. She stood up but was dripping blood.”

She took Toasty to the ER animal hospital on Ben White and spoke with Dr. Pulson.

He told Martinez that with the loss of blood and number of wounds, the dog’s chances of survival were low and the cost to attempt to save her was high.

“You may have to think about putting her down,” the vet said.

She told him she needed some time.

“It was a hard decision to make,” she said.

The dogs were her children’s only connection to their father, former Kyle council member Chris Martinez, who passed away in December from a stroke.

In the end, the family decided to let Toasty go.