The only thing Shannon Cunningham could see as she sat sprawled on the ground with her left shin clamped between a large dog's jaws was the animal's teeth and eyeballs.

After her own dog jumped on her canine attacker, the first dog 'spit my leg out of its mouth,' Cunningham testified in Yukon Supreme Court this morning.

'I looked at my leg blood everywhere.'

Minutes earlier, at about 11 p.m. last June 23, Cunningham had climbed out of bed in her Carcross home because she could hear her 16-year-old daughter, Sarah Kelly, hollering.

After throwing on a housecoat, the 46-year-old mother went to the front door and peered around her daughter.

Cunningham could see the family dog, a black Labrador/mutt about eight months old named Sky, fighting at the front steps with another dog.

That dog's owner, Alvin Matthews, stood at the house's corner, Cunningham said, as her daughter told him to 'get your dog and get it out of here.'

Matthews, 49, is on trial in front of a jury for aggravated assault, assault with a weapon his dog and assaulting the Carcross RCMP officer who tried to arrest him later outside the Carcross nursing station, where Cunningham was being treated.

Both Cunningham and her teenage daughter have testified that Matthews 'sicced' his dog first on their family pet and then on the older woman as she tried to break up a dog fight.

Cunningham testified that after she peered around her daughter, she too told Matthews to take his dog and leave.

'He just started swearing at us and started calling us names,' Cunningham told the jury. 'I assumed he'd been drinking. He seemed drunk.'

The woman exited her doorway and grabbed the collars of the two scrapping dogs, which were about the same size. She pulled the pair apart and let them go, though the dogs continued milling around and growling at each other.

'He turned, he looked at his dog and said Sic 'em,'' Cunningham said.

After Matthews' dog jumped on Sky again, Cunningham ran off the steps and tried again to pry the animals apart. She was hunched over, grabbing the collar of her pet, which was on the bottom of the dog pile, when she felt Matthews push her.

She hit the ground with her hip, and was about to push herself to her feet when she heard Matthews say, 'Sic her, get her,' she told the court.

The man's dog grabbed her lower left leg in its jaws, and didn't let go until Sky jumped on top of his five-foot-tall, 130-pound owner's four-legged attacker.

Once she could see her leg again, Cunningham saw a large flap of skin hanging on the front of the limb, and muscle and tissue bulging through puncture wounds on her calf.

'Look at what your fóóing dog did to my leg,' Cunningham recounted telling Matthews as she held her torn leg together.

'It was excruciating,' the woman testified. 'The pain was horrible.'

Both Cunningham and her boyfriend, Howard Atlin, who'd by this time come out of the house, told Kelly to run and call the police and ambulance personnel.

Atlin helped the woman into the house and into a chair. Cunningham tied a wet bandana around her leg as a tourniquet.

'I was getting very scared,' she said. 'I was getting weak, nauseated just scared.'

When her daughter returned to the home with a friend she'd run to get, the teenage girl put down a kitchen knife she'd been carrying.

Kelly told her she'd stabbed the dog, Cunningham said.

Testifying Monday afternoon, the teenager said she'd gone inside to fetch the knife while her mother broke up the dog fight. She 'lost control' when she saw her mom's bleeding leg.

'There was blood everywhere,' Kelly said. 'That's when I lost control and stabbed his dog two or three times in the back.'

Matthews picked up a rock and chased her down the road as she fled to a friend's house in her bare feet, Kelly told the court Monday.

A friend arrived in her van and drove Cunningham to the nursing station.

Matthews was there when they arrived, Cunningham testified, kneeling by the station's front door over his dog.

Nurse Linda Van Pelt testified earlier today she called the RCMP to keep the peace after realizing the man at the front door with a bleeding dog and the woman she'd been told was on her way with a dog bite were probably connected.

After the nurse elevated and cleaned the wound, an ambulance transported Cunningham into Whitehorse so her leg could be examined and stitched up by a doctor. She said today the front of her left shin is still swollen and tender.

'It seemed like everybody' was yelling at each other as Cunningham was wheeled into the station, Van Pelt said.

The first to testify Monday morning, Const. Jeff Monkman, said when he arrived, he too saw Matthews kneeling over his dog.

He noted that Matthews appeared to be intoxicated from his bloodshot eyes and the fact he was yelling at Kelly.

At one point, the man tried to come into the nursing station and was shouting at Kelly again, Monkman testified.

'He was very belligerent about his dog being stabbed.'

At different points, the constable told Matthews three times he was under arrest, variously for causing a disturbance, and, once he'd called over to the police station and was told Matthews was on a court order not to drink, for breaching his conditions.

Matthews said more than once the constable was making an unlawful arrest, Monkman agreed under cross-examination. It later turned out the older man wasn't on any court conditions.

Initially when Monkman told Matthews to put his hands behind his back, the man complied, the constable explained, but once the officer had one handcuff on, 'he, out of the blue, became violent.'

Matthews started swinging and punching at him, Monkman said, noting he grabbed the hand with the cuff attached because he was worried he'd be hit by the metal.

Once Matthews rolled away from him, he started swinging with both hands, and clipped the constable in the eye.

Monkman, who stands about six foot one and weighs 235 pounds, said he picked the other man up, threw him onto the ground on his back, and with a hand and knee pinning Matthews down, punched the older, slighter man three times in the face.

Matthews' eyes 'rolled back' and the man briefly lost consciousness, long enough for Monkman to roll him onto his belly and finish handcuffing him.

Once in the handcuffs and again awake, Matthews again started struggling, and swore at the officer as he was read his rights, the court heard.

The trial continued this afternoon.