Latifa Amdur and Romeo had an immediate connection.
Three years ago Amdur had just moved to Dallas from Hawaii to help raise her granddaughter, Greenlee. The two were together on a grey and rainy Dallas afternoon when they drove by the dog shelter Dallas Paws and decided to give some attention to needy dogs.
“There he was,” she recalls. “This little, filthy, tiny creature sitting in this great, big cage.”
Amdur, a dog owner all her life, wasn’t looking for the responsibility of a new dog at the time, but there was something about this dog.
“He just looked up at me with these eyes and it’s like they were saying ‘Hey, let’s go play.’ ”
That day she adopted the Coton de Tuléar and the duo were inseparable from then until Romeo’s death. She gave him the name Romeo because of the love he showed everyone. Amdur is a doctor of naturopathic and oriental medicine, and
when patients would come to her home for treatment even the “self professed ‘non-dog’ people” felt a connection with Romeo, she says. “No matter who I have seen in the last three years they have all said the same thing. ‘That is the most amazing dog I have ever met.’ ”
Even the mail carrier loved the dog. He cried when he found out Romeo had passed.
Every morning Amdur and Romeo would get up and walk to Tenison Park, just down the street from their Sarasota Circle home.
“On Sunday we went to the park and as we were going past the playground a hound, a black and tan hound, with a leash dragging on his neck came running up.” The dog hadn’t been fixed, which, she said is a big warning.
Romeo was well-trained. In September he gained his certification to become a service animal. “He was a service dog, a therapy dog. We were getting ready to start working in the hospital with kids.” Whenever Amdur issued a command, he followed it. She told Romeo to “leave it,” to ignore the other dog and come with her. But by then it was too late. “I turned and suddenly there was like nothing there. I had his leash and collar attached in my hand. There was this fury of animals and I didn’t even realize at first that Romeo was underneath of it all.”
The black and tan hound and at least four other dogs had ripped Romeo from his collar.
A man, presumably the owner or caretaker of the dogs, came over. He eventually got on top of Romeo while the dogs lunged at him. He lifted the beaten dog over his head and placed him on top of his truck. The man told Amdur to get to her car. She left the scene, but she couldn’t run. Two of the dogs had turned their attention to her. She swung Romeo’s leash in a circle — it was the only thing she had on her — to try to deter the dogs.
Amdur eventually got home, called the police and got in her car. She had a friend of hers wait for the police at the park while she took Romeo to an emergency animal hospital. The dog had a punctured lung, broken ribs, deep lacerations and blood in his urine. 
Romeo passed away just after 11 p.m. on July 31.
Since Sunday Amdur has felt lost. Her home feels empty and oddly quiet. The only solace she has found is that she thinks Romeo probably saved her life.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. I just don’t know,” she says.
Amdur doesn’t really want to talk about what happened, she says. The trauma is still too recent, but she feels like she needs to as a warning to others.
Dog attacks have become an issue in Dallas. In July a dog was killed while being walked on Orient, earlier this summer a 13-year-old was mauled in front of his apartment, and in May a pack of dogs killed Antoinette Brown, pushing the city to re-examine its loose dog laws.
Police say the incident report from Sunday is listed under miscellaneous, and is therefore not yet open to the public. Code compliance officers did not respond to several calls about the attack.
