VALLEY CENTER - Nancy Matthews still describes herself as an animal lover, despite lingering fears from what she said she went through last year.

In November, Matthews said she was attacked by two boxers while taking a walk with her two young sons on Sierra Rojo Road, several blocks from their Valley Center home. When the first boxer lunged at her 8-year-old son Heath, she said she threw herself on top of the dog.

Moments later, the second boxer emerged and the two dogs mauled her as the boys climbed a fence to safety, she said.

The boxers' owner, Pedro Balerio Torres Sr., 43, who declined a request for an interview, was ordered by a judge to stand trial on two felony charges for failing to protect the public from the dogs. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison, Torres' defense attorney Mark Spencer said.

The readiness trial is set for Oct. 19. Civil litigation is also pending.

Matthews said she was hospitalized for six days after the attack, which left her with bites and scars over most of her body. She said a doctor sutured more than 20 areas on her head, right ear, legs, arms and back, and that her right leg had a hole big enough to put her fist through. She also suffered a severed left bicep and several sliced muscles, and required a blood transfusion, she said.

The prosecutor argued in court that Torres was responsible for the attack because he had been warned by an animal control officer about the dogs' vicious nature after they bit two people in 2004, and that he ignored specific instructions on how to control them.

Matthews, a veterinarian, shifts in her seat when she recalls the attack, and speaks quietly so her sons don't have to relive it.

She and the boys had finished climbing the "infamous steep hill" -- a family tradition -- and had each collected a pebble to mark the accomplishment when she first saw the dog blocking their path, Matthews said. She said she reached for her sons' hands and started to back away, calling out to the Torres house for help.

"The dog cocked his head and looked at me, and then his expression turned suddenly ferocious," Matthews said.

Suddenly, she said, the dog was immediately past Matthews, leaping onto Heath.

"I leaped on the dog. It was just blind maternal instinct," she said.

The rest of her memories of the attack are less clear, a "blur of pain, screams, growls and lapses of consciousness," she said.

Matthews isn't sure where the second boxer emerged from, but said she recalled that while one dog pulled her across the gravel with his teeth sunk into her right side, the other lurched at her face. She said all she could think of was stopping them before they got her sons.

"I kept hearing the boys screaming. They were frantic, and I kept thinking, 'why won't they run away?' " She said. "Then I began to believe that maybe they were being attacked too."

Matthews said the dogs were wrestling over her, "like a chew toy," and that she curled up into a ball to try to protect her neck. Finally, she said she had what she described as an "out of body experience."

"I could hear one of the dogs chewing on my leg and then the pain just stopped," she said. "That calm just pulled me in, and I wanted to be there instead of being in this demented horror movie I was in."

Eventually Delia Vasquez, Torres' wife, ran out to stop the attack, beating the ground with a rake and screaming at the dogs who retreated into the yard, according to Matthews. Torres' attorney said Vasquez didn't call an ambulance because she speaks limited English, but offered a cell phone to Matthews, who called her husband.

Currently, Matthews' life is still in disarray, she said.

She said her medical insurance has paid $100,000 toward hospital bills, leaving her responsible for at least another $50,000. She said she has taken a second and third trust deed out on her house, and her husband turned in his life insurance policy last month to cover other expenses. The debt, coupled with the fact that Matthews isn't able to work because of physical pain and a "paralyzing" fear of dogs, has left the family financially burdened, she said.

"I'm a freak of nature," Matthews said, laughing. "I'm a vet who's afraid of dogs."

Torres' attorney said the family can't offer any compensation to Matthews until the criminal and civil proceedings are over.

However, Spencer said Torres isn't criminally liable, and that the charges the district attorney's office filed against him should be dropped because it was his 23-year-old visiting son who left the gate open the day the dogs attacked Matthews.

"The family (Torres) does feel terrible about it," Spencer said. "But it was a mistake. A terrible mistake."

Torres' son told Spencer he had been in a hurry the day he left the gate open, Spencer said.

Spencer said the dogs were never aggressive with the people who lived in the home, including five children.

The dogs, named Bruno and Kilo, were euthanized after the attack.

Life has changed for her sons too, Matthews said. Heath, now 9, became clingy and scared to be away from his mom after the attack and Patrick, 11, exhibits more anger, according to their mother. Recently, Heath has been drawing red marker scars that resemble his mom's on his arms, she said.

Matthews said she isn't sure if Torres deserves the prison time he faces if convicted, but that she never wants what happened to her to happen to someone else.

"It's in the hands of the judge and the jury now, not mine thank God," she said.

- Contact staff writer Darryn Bennett at (760) 740-5420 or dmbennett@nctimes.com.