When 9-year-old Sofia Knapp visited the Kalispell City Attorney’s Office last month she was given a pencil with a double-ended eraser that was cleverly shaped like a gavel with the slogan “Justice for All” stamped on its side.

After the visit, Sofia and her parents Julie and Jason Knapp don’t feel like justice has been served at all, because a dog that bit and severely injured Sofia on April 8 has been allowed to live without any repercussions.

“I think the dog should be put down or at least moved to the wild or something,” Sofia said. “I don’t think it should live with people.”

City Attorney Charlie Harball said the case is an unfortunate one that has been handled within the confines of the law, but that it is unlikely the dog would have been put down given the circumstances of the case.

According to the Knapps, the neighbor had four dogs that lived in the yard, including one that appeared to be a lab mix named Buster. Buster’s owner Ben Direito hung up on the Daily Inter Lake when given the opportunity to comment on Friday. He did not return voice mails or emails Thursday or Friday.

According to the Knapps, Buster had been a minor nuisance in the past to the Knapp family. The dog sometimes would jump the four-feet-tall fence separating the homes and end up in the Knapp’s back yard. The Knapps said they did not want to be bad neighbors, so they helped get Buster back over the fence without too much fuss. While his conduct was bothersome, he never appeared aggressive before the day of the attack.

Sofia was playing in the back yard, tossing a ball on April 8, when it flew too high and went over a neighbor’s fence. Buster grabbed it.

Sofia asked the dog owner’s 4-year-old daughter, who was in the adjacent back yard with Buster, to throw the ball back over the fence. The 4-year-old said she would not throw the ball back over and Sofia said the girl invited her to climb over the fence and get the ball.

Sofia said when she asked the dog to drop the ball that he bit her twice on the upper cheek. Her eye glasses were broken in two places and blood spurted everywhere.

At the hospital, Sofia received 45 stitches.

“He bit all the way through my cheek,” Sofia said. Stitches were placed inside and outside Sofia’s cheek. A month after the incident, half of her face still droops, and she will have to continue seeking follow-up treatment.

“I can’t smile,” Sofia said. At first, her eyelids did not close all the way, though that side effect has mostly ebbed.

Sofia and her family hoped that there might be some repercussions for the damage, but so far, nothing has happened. The Kalispell City Attorney’s Office was in the process of trying to have a hearing to see if the dog needed to be declared a vicious dog, but when the owner took it and moved to Columbia Falls, the Knapps were told that the city attorney technically had no more jurisdiction over the animal.

“It’s almost like our daughter’s had this horrific injury and there’s not even a slap on the wrist,” Jason said. “They’d put a wild bear down if it did something like this.”

Julie also pointed out that if a person had cut Sofia on the cheek, caused similar injuries, and moved to Columbia Falls, it would still be possible to charge that person with a crime.

City Attorney Charlie Harball said that the city’s animal ordinances underwent a revamp two or three years ago and he believes that they are much better than they used to be.

In the case of a dog bite the animal is taken into custody if it is at large. It is quarantined in its own space if it is properly secured.

A hearing is then held and a judge gets to decide if extra safety precautions need to be taken to keep the public safe. Judges can order higher fencing or increased insurance coverage. In extreme cases, a judge can order that the animal be euthanized.

“In this case it never even got that far,” Harball said.

The owner moved out of town last week.

“Now the city of Kalispell no longer has jurisdiction over that animal,” Harball said. “We can’t order that animal be brought back into Kalispell. If the owner brings the dog back into Kalispell voluntarily, we would then have jurisdiction.”

Harball said that dog bite cases are rare and that people moving away with animals under investigation is even more rare.

“Historically we haven’t had a big issue with that — people moving dangerous animals around,” Harball said.

In this case Harball thinks it would be unlikely that the dog would have to be put down, given that it was the first documented bite case with the animal and that it occurred in the animal’s own yard.

“If an animal is within their own space it is understood that animal behavior is that if someone they don’t know comes into their space they are usually very protective,” Harball said. “I think a judge would have been pretty hesitant to put the animal down.”

He does not want to minimize Sofia’s pain or her parent’s anger.

“It doesn’t minimize the fact that it was a nasty injury,” Harball said. “It really was and I understand why the parent was so upset.”

Harball said he does not think the town has a problem with vicious dogs.

“A situation like this is really rare,” Harball said. “It is rare for a child to wander into another enclosure. Children generally know better than that. I don’t think the parents were negligent. It only takes a quick moment for something like that to happen.”

According to a press release sent out by State Farm Insurance last week, more than 50 percent of dog bite victims are children.

Last year State Farm received nine insurance claims for dog bite injuries totaling $315,000. Montana is tied with Maine and New Hampshire for the third highest number of claims filed nation wide that year.

The insurance company says that in 2015 the average cost for dog $37,214 each.

National Dog Bite Prevention Week is May 15-21. The American Veterinary Medical Association uses the week as an opportunity to point out that children and postal workers are most likely to be bit by a dog. The association claims the majority of the bites are preventable.

Dog training expert Victoria Stilwell has spent the past 20 years working as a dog trainer, including eight years on the TV show “It’s Me or the Dog.” As someone who was recently bitten by a dog, she knows that bites can happen even in the best of circumstances and have long-lasting side effects.

“It hurts like hell for a long time,” Stilwell said. “It takes a good six weeks to get to the time where it’s not painful anymore. Trauma can stay with people for a long time. For kids that have been bitten, they can be afraid of dogs for the rest of their life.”

Bites to the face are particularly traumatic, Stilwell said.

Stilwell said that statistics she’s been read indicate that half of all children will receive a nip or a bite from a dog by age 12.

She stresses that there are some major steps parents and dog-owners can take to prevent a bite.

She suggests teaching children dog etiquette beginning around age 5. Until age 8 children should be heavily supervised when having interaction with dogs. After that age children can usually have a little more freedom with the dog, Stilwell said.

Children should learn to never enter a dog’s yard or fence without permission from the dog’s owner, Stilwell said.

“Don’t go into its space,” Stilwell said. “Allow it to come into yours if you feel like the dog is friendly.”

Children should be taught to get an adult that he or she is familiar with, in his or her own yard, to retrieve balls or lost items that fly over the fence, Stilwell said.

“If a dog comes up to you, we teach kids to be very still,” Stilwell said. “I tell them to be as boring as possible. Dogs can get very excited by movement and high pitched noises.”

Dog owners can also help by raising their dogs to be familiar with children. If unfamiliar children are coming over for a play date, Stilwell recommends keeping the dog in a separate area behind a playgate or other enclosure.

Fences are the best way to keep dogs away from passersby, and Stilwell is a fan of physical barriers, not popular invisible electric fences that connect to a shock collar.

“Electric fences, don’t stop people coming in and a lot of times they don’t stop dogs rushing out of the property even if they have the shock collar on,” Stilwell said.

She advocates teaching dogs in a non-aggressive way.

“I teach life skills,” Stilwell said. “Take the time to teach your dogs life skills in a humane way. Because the more aggression you show your dog, the more aggression your dog will have.”

Stilwell has more resources available about dog training at positively.com. The American Veterinary Medical Association also has resources available at www.avma.org.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or [email protected].