Former Liverpool player Jermaine Pennant has revealed he needed more than 50 stitches after a German Shepherd attacked him while he was out with his dogs in north London.
The 43-year-old former Premier League winger said the incident happened last week. He tried to shield his own dog, King, but the German Shepherd clamped onto his leg and wouldn’t release its grip. Pennant said he was pinned to the ground with the dog still attached until King stepped in and drove the animal off, which he credited with averting a far worse outcome.
Speaking to the Sun, Pennant said he suffered four bite wounds to his right leg and was treated in hospital. King escaped with only a minor nip, though he was covered in blood that, thankfully, wasn’t his own. Pennant said he hadn’t reported the incident to police, and he gave no details about the other dog.
“I forgot the agony I was in, and my heart sank,” he recalled of the moment he saw the blood on King, before realizing it wasn’t the dog’s.
In an Instagram post showing him on the sofa with his bandaged leg beside King, Pennant called the dog his “hero” and a “legend,” and thanked his partner, Mimmi Montgomery, for caring for them both.
Pennant, now a Talksport pundit, played 231 Premier League games over a 19-year career that ended in 2018. He first made headlines as a teenager in 1999, when Arsenal paid £2.5m to sign the 15-year-old from Notts County, a record fee for a trainee in English football at the time.
