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Spotlight pays off for woman who bit dog
©Associated Press
February 4, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- The grandmother who gained national attention for biting a pit bull to save her dog last summer has found a second companion.
Margaret Hargrove, 73, was reunited with an old friend because of the attack and now has plans to marry him this spring in Tallahassee.
"It's been a strange year for me," Hargrove said. "But there's a purpose for everything in our lives. You have to believe there was some plan somewhere for all of us, for all of this to have come about the way it has."
Byron Godwin, 75, saw the story and called Hargrove, a longtime friend he met in the early 1950s. Both widowed, they had lunch and their relationship has progressed ever since.
They plan to wed March 2 with Hargrove's dog carrying the rings.
"When I read about her, I got real excited," Godwin said. "I wanted to see her again. She'd been a good friend, and we'd had some good times together. I had no idea there'd be anything romantic."
Hargrove was thrust into the national spotlight after saving her little dog, a 9-month-old Scottish terrier, during an evening stroll last June. That's when Alex, a pit bull in a nearby yard, began to eye the terrier.
Hargrove tried to steer her dog away, but the female pit bull caught up, clamping its jaws around the terrier's head. Hargrove couldn't pry the pit bull loose, so in desperation, she got on her knees and bit down on the back of the pit bull's neck.
The dog let go and backed off, then bared its teeth at Hargrove, who bit back again.
A baseball-bat wielding neighbor finally scared the canine off for good.
In the aftermath, Hargrove was on television and radio shows across the world. Godwin was much closer, though, living in Tampa.
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