A DOG owner has been fined after his pet attacked a seven-year-old girl.

David Paton’s two-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier bit the youngster on her shoulder and head during the terrifying ordeal outside his father’s home in Fawkes Drive, Acomb, in June.

Paton, 46, was fined £80 at York Magistrates Court and ordered to pay the child £150 compensation after the pet escaped from his father’s garden.

Martin Butterworth, prosecuting, said the dog, called Pandora, was in a garden surrounded by a wall and fence a metre high and had become “excitable” when a group of children approached the garden. He said: “It jumped up at the gate and knocked the latch open.

“It approached the girl who was running away and when she turned and fell over, the dog bit her on the shoulder and top of the head.”

Paton’s father pulled the dog off the child moments later and she was taken to hospital.

The wound on her head was stitched, but the shoulder injury did not require treatment and the court heard the injuries did not disfigure the youngster.

Paton, of Lindsey Avenue, York, was not present during the attack, however, he is the dog’s registered owner and pleaded guilty to having a dog dangerously out of control.