A stray dog stands outside Keith Allen Sawyers' home in rural Dunklin County. Sawyers, who remains in critical condition at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis, was injured seriously by his own pit bull dog on New Years Day outside the home. [Click to enlarge]

A Dunklin County man remains in critical but stable condition at a Memphis hospital as the result of a Jan. 1 pit bull dog attack, a family spokesman said Monday.

The family member, who requested anonymity, said Keith Allen Sawyers, 50, of Dunklin County Road 701, was attacked by his own dog, and that the 95-pound animal named "Thumper" never displayed aggression toward anyone prior to the New Years Day mauling.

"The dog chewed of the lower part of his face and part of his neck," the source said. "All the muscles on the lower part of his face.

"It didn't take off the jawbone," the family member added. "The dog bit through his right eye, and he'll most likely be blind in that eye."

Dunklin County deputies and emergency management services personnel responded to a 911 call at 2:05 a.m. Jan. 1,Dunklin County Sheriff Bob Holder said.

The front door of the home was open, and family members saw the dog standing in the doorway with blood on its face, Holder said.

"[Sawyers] don't remember what happened," the source said. "He don't know he was attacked by his dog.

"Doyle Malone found him," the source continued. "He found him laying in the yard on New Years Day. What the dog done, it chewed off the lower part of his face, took off both ears, bit his eye and it pulled out all his hair."

Sawyers, and electrician who works for Tom McCall of Caruthersville, was found covered in blood in the back yard of the home, police said.

"The accident must have happened on the outside [of the home]," the family member said. "The only thing we can figure is maybe [Sawyers] got up and went outside to go to the bathroom and the dog seen him, thought he was an intruder, and might have attacked him that way.

"He raised that dog from a pup," the source added. "He had him for three years."

Thumper lived inside the home, a small frame structure that is located across from a large open farm shop near Missouri NN and Dunklin County Road 701.

"The dog slept right on the bed with [Sawyers]," the source said.

The family member added that Sawyers is "kept unconscious" by his physicians.

"He's paralyzed so he don't move his jaws," the source said. "He's had two surgeries on his face and one on his stomach because he jerked the feeding tube out of his stomach. They expect him to make a full recovery, but he'll be blind in one eye. It's just going to be a long, drawed-out deal. We really don't know for sure how long it's going to be -- how long he's going to have to stay at The Med."

The source described the white and brown Thumper as "a playful dog," and emphasized rumors indicated Sawyers was killed by the animal.

"He's very much alive," the source said. "He got saved right after all this happened.

"A friend of mine that I met down there at the hospital come in, prayed with him and he got changed that day," the family member added. "We're getting ready to move everything out of his house.

Officers at the scene shot the dog at the family's request, Holder said.

The attack is the first to take place in the county in recent memory, and the first to occur since Kennett councilmen took measures to ban the animals within the city limits.

However, no such ordinance is in place within Dunklin County, Presiding Commissioner Don Collins said.

The Kennett council considered defining pit bulls and similar breeds as dangerous dogs since 2001 before adding them to the list of dangerous animals in 2006.

It is illegal to own pit bull terriers and other breeds derived from pit bulls in Kennett and in many Bootheel cities.

Arbyrd adopted a dangerous dog ordinance in 2006 that makes ownership of such animals within the city limits a misdemeanor.

Attacks by pit bulls accounted for about a third of the 238 fatal dog attacks in the United States during a 20-year study, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Pit bulls were blamed for killing 76 people, or 32 percent, during a study of dog attacks from 1979-1998, the study showed. Rottweilers were the second most deadly animal, reportedly killing 44 people, or 18.5 percent, during the same period, the publication reported.