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A high-profile dog attack has shaken St. Louis. For survivors, the story is all too familiar 13%
By Emily Woodbury43%
6/12/2026, 5:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Hasty Generalization, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 18.6% saturation with 276 hits. Analysis detected 2,168 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,484 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.8% and a BS Rank of 13% (18,475 of 21,180 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.20% of the article peer group.
In the week since St.
Louis business owner and musician Steve Ewing’s wife and family dog were attacked by two dogs in Tower Grove Park, stories from people who experienced dog attacks in St.
Louis are coming out of the woodwork.
“My thoughts and prayers are with Steve and his family,” Jessie Boucher wrote on Instagram.
“My wiener dog, Chip, and I were attacked by two dogs in 2021 when we lived in Dogtown.
Chip barely survived, and it was an absolutely traumatic experience.”
Data from the St.
Louis Citizen Service Bureau shows an increase in dangerous animal complaints to the city of St.
Louis in recent years.
The rate of complaints about animal bites is even higher, according to the St.
Louis Department of Health’s Animal Care and Control Division.
In 2025, the division reported 657 calls about animal bites.
There have been 389 calls so far this year.
Among all U.S. cities, St.
Louis ranks sixth in the nation for recorded dog bites and attacks on mail carriers and postal employees, according to a new report from the U.S.
Postal Service.
When dogs attack
Tower Grove East resident Slayden Figg is still suffering from the effects of an attack last year.
“I don't feel comfortable walking outside of my house with my dog,” he said.
On July 4, he was walking his dog Sonic on South Grand Boulevard when three unleashed dogs ran toward him.
He picked Sonic up and started to walk in the other direction, but the dogs tackled them to the ground.
“I jumped on top of [Sonic] and shielded him, and then they started mauling me.
They bit me all over,” he said.
“At one point, one of them had a hold of my nose, one of them had a hold of my neck and one of them had a hold of my arm — all at the same time, and they're just pulling.”
The dogs wouldn’t let go, Figg said, until a bystander used pepper spray on them.
Another witness offered their vehicle to Figg and Sonic to sit inside until first responders showed up.
After 30 minutes of waiting with no response, Figg walked home.
“I've got to get to a hospital.
I'm bleeding, my dog’s cut up,” he said.
“I drop [Sonic] off at the house, and I tried to call an ambulance again.
They still didn't show up, so I drove myself to the hospital.”
Figg needed stitches on his eyelids, nose and forehead, and he received rabies vaccine injections over the course of several weeks.
His medical bills totaled about $5,000 after insurance.
Sonic’s leg surgery cost nearly $2,000.
When Figg went to file a report with the police, they directed him to St.
Louis Animal Care and Control, which directed him to the Citizens' Service Bureau, which sent him back to animal control.
Figg said an animal control officer told him they couldn’t hold the dog owners responsible without identification.
So Figg launched his own investigation.
He wrote a Reddit post describing the dogs and the attack, and he obtained security footage from a camera at Jay’s International Market.
“Everybody on that strip was really helpful, the residents and the business owners and stuff,” he said.
Several neighbors identified the dogs and shared the owner’s address with Figg, who passed the information to animal control.
City staff members told Figg that they placed the dogs on a 10-day quarantine and that they would follow up with him.
A little over a week later, the dogs attacked another resident and her dog.
“So I reached [back] out to animal control, and I'm like, ‘Hey, I think, the same dogs that got me, they got somebody else [while] they were supposed to be on quarantine,” Figg said.
“They're like, ‘We can't confirm or deny it was the same dogs, but we'll look into it.’”
Figg said he was disappointed in the city’s response.
“Just the lack of attentiveness on the situation, you know, not getting back to me about my incident until the dogs had got out and got another victim,” he said.
“And I feel like leash laws could be enforced more.”
Animal laws and regulations
The City of St.
Louis requires pets to be kept on a leash when they are in public places.
The leash may not be more than six feet long and must be held by someone capable of controlling the animal.
Violating the law is a municipal offense that carries fines from $100 to $500.
“Violation of a leash law is an offense that we can charge and fine for, most certainly, but sometimes getting the amount of evidence that we need in order to file those charges can be a bit of a barrier,” said St.
Louis Animal Regulations Center Supervisor Kristin Zellin.
Animal control officers are also limited in their enforcement of the law.
“We are not the police,” she said.
“We do get police involved whenever there is an owner that is being exceedingly difficult, that has dangerous dogs, [who] will not cooperate.”
Recourse for victims
The owner of the dogs that attacked Figg, Ryan Alford, didn’t face charges.
“He got away scot-free,” Figg said.
At the time of the attack, Alford had four dogs at his residence.
Two were impounded to a city shelter.
Alford told St.
Louis Magazine in August that he moved one dog to his home in St.
Charles and sold another to someone in Texas.
Figg tried to file a lawsuit against Alford, but Alford didn’t have homeowners insurance.
Figg was told there was no way to collect damages.
“Somebody suggested I try to collect damages from him personally, but my lawyer said that he has a history of filing for bankruptcy,” Figg said.
“I would lose more money in court than what I would gain from the damages.”
Root causes of a dog attack
The main factors behind dog attacks are under-socialized and poorly trained dogs, having dogs off leash in crowded spaces and owners misreading or ignoring signals that their dog is about to engage in aggressive behavior, said Dr.
Keri Morgan, medical director at the Center for Animal Rescue and Enrichment of St.
Louis.
“We are not the best at reading communication and understanding how dogs are communicating with us,” Morgan said.
She advised dog owners to familiarize themselves with the lower-level signs of stress escalation, like tense muscles, being frozen in place and a locked-in stare.
Preventing dog-on-dog conflict, she added, begins with supporting dog owners who may not have the resources to pay for training or sterilization procedures that reduce hormone-driven aggressive behaviors in dogs.
“I think everyone deserves the love of a dog,” Morgan said.
“How can we help provide those resources to people so that we're not in so many situations where we have these dog attacks happening in the first place?”
Preparing for a worst-case scenario
If you experience or witness a dog attack, Zellin advised gathering as much information as possible — once it’s safe to do so.
Animal control officers can use photos of the attacking dog and its owner, witness contact information, photos of wounds and medical records to build a case.
Stories of dog attacks in St.
Louis continue to circulate on social media, with residents sharing their methods for protecting themselves and their pets while in public.
“My dog was attacked twice by some random dogs running amok on S.
Grand,” wrote Shannon Rae Taylor on Facebook.
“Now I carry mace with me.”
Other dog owners reported carrying protection measures including a cattle prod, police baton, fire extinguisher and firearms.
“I never walk without my gun,” Dawn Turlington commented.
“No one should have to carry a weapon, but unfortunately we live in a world that doesn’t leave us a choice.”
Figg stopped walking his dog Sonic around Tower Grove Park.
He said there’s too many off-leash dogs in the surrounding neighborhoods.
The issue is so pervasive that he plans to move to St.
Louis County, to an area “that's got a little bit more trails and is out of the way a little bit.”
“It's unfortunate, because it's only a matter of time before something like that happens again,” Figg said.
“I don't have kids myself, but I want to one day, and I don't want to live in a place where I have to worry about my kids getting attacked by unleashed dogs while they're just playing in the yard.
That's no way to live.”
To hear more from Slayden Figg, animal control officer Kristin Zellin, Dr.
Keri Morgan and St.
Louis resident Cat Blake — who reports being attacked by two dogs at City Garden Sculpture Park downtown last week — listen to “St.
Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
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100%flagged-word coverageDawn Turlington
30 attributed words3.9% of attributed speech59% writer coverage
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