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Grandmother attacked by pit bulls: 'If you want to survive, you're going to have to fight'

SEATTLE — A Satsop-area woman who was mauled by her family’s two pit bulls told KIRO 7 on Wednesday that she was fighting for her survival during the attack.

It happened Monday. Gloria Boswell, 82, said the dogs attacked suddenly while she was picking up a pillow she knocked off her couch.

“And that dog come up off that floor, and into that couch and around my neck,” she said. “I just wrapped my hands in the collars and fought. He was a-bitin’ and I was a-bouncin’.”

She suffered bites to her face, arms, leg and back, and was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

“I’m doing better than I probably would have been,” she said from her hospital bed Wednesday.

Her daughter, April, was at her bedside.

“I close my eyes and I can just hear her screaming for help, and there’s nobody there to help her,” April said, pausing as she choked up. “She’s my life.”

But Boswell, who was strong enough to have raised nine kids, said she just did what she had to do.

“If you want to survive, you’re going to have to fight,” she said. “And I wasn’t about to give up my home and my life just because a pillow fell off a couch.”