Christy Baker doesn’t blame the pit bull that attacked her last week, leaving her with a broken arm, 44 stitches and multiple bruises.

“He can’t help it,” Baker said of the dog named Buddy. “It was the way it was raised.”

Buddy was shot and killed by police at an apartment complex in the 6500 block of North Atlantic Street on Wednesday. The dog belonged to her son, Levi Jessup, and had only lived with them for a week. The friend they got it from said the dog was abused as a puppy when it lived in a drug house, but he’d had it for a year and had no problems, Baker said.

Baker and her son were in the living room of their apartment and her son was playing with the dog when its eyes glazed over and it attacked. “It was in a rage and that was it,” she said. “It was just a freak thing.”

The dog attacked her son first. Baker pried its jaws open and it went after her next. The dog bit her arms repeatedly until a neighbor came to her rescue. “He was getting ready to go for my neck,” she said.

The dog bit the neighbor and eventually escaped outside, where it attacked other people. A police officer shot the dog after it repeatedly evaded capture, which upset Baker. “I don’t blame the dog at all,” she said. “I feel bad for the dog.”

Baker said pit bulls can be good dogs if they are raised correctly. “I would own a pit bull again,” she said.

Baker said her family was evicted because of the dog attack. Before they were able to move out, however, their apartment burned in a two-alarm fire Saturday. “Now we don’t have anything to move,” she said.