Her son will need rabies shots — if she can’t find the dog that bit him

A boy may need several rabies shots, after he was bitten by a woman’s dog at a YMCA in Matthews on Monday.

Now the family is scrambling to find the owner of the dog to see if it has been vaccinated.

Penny Judkins, the boy’s mother, took to Facebook to describe what happened to her son, Zachary. He had just finished soccer practice on Monday at the Siskey YMCA in Matthews, when he asked a woman if her could pet her dog.

The dog bit Zachary in the face, causing him to bleed, Judkins wrote. When the family took Zachary to the hospital, doctors told them he would have to undergo several rounds of shots to his face if they were unable to find out the dog’s vaccination history.

The dog was on a leash, so it’s unlikely it has rabies, but the family doesn’t want to take any chances, Judkins said.

“Please pray we find this woman,” Judkins wrote in her post, which has been shared more than 500 times.

Zachary, who’s 6, can go 10 days at most without getting the shots, WCNC reported. Brian Judkins, Zachary’s father, said the family doesn’t want anything else from the dog owner but to make sure their son is safe.

“We don’t want money, we don’t want trouble, we’re not mad,” he told WCNC. “We just want to know what the situation is with the dog’s rabies vaccine.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2017 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Her son will need rabies shots — if she can’t find the dog that bit him."