FEDERAL WAY, Wash. -- A 7-year-old girl is recovering from several bite marks after she was attacked by a dog while walking up to a stranger's front door.

But as her family prepares to sue the dog's owners, the owners say the dog was just doing his job when he pinned the girl to the ground and began biting.

The incident happened Saturday afternoon, when she and her father stopped at a home in Federal Way. She would run up to front doors and drop off business cards for his painting business.

At this particular home, while walking up the long driveway, she was attacked by a pit bull terrier-chow mix.

"I would never send my daughter on someone's property," said Chris Brown, the dog's owner. "I would have walked up there myself. You never know what's going to happen."

The front of the house has no fence, nor a gate. The only indication of an dangerous dog on the property is a sign that says "Warning: Security Dog" posted near the road.

Any stranger who walks up could a target.

"I thought he was doing what he was bred, what he was taught to do," Brown said. "We got him as a baby. He raised him to be a security dog."

The owners use a electronic fence with a shock collar to keep the dog in the yard. But animal control officials say a situation like this one is big trouble, because with no physical barrier, people are more at ease about walking up to a house.

"The front of the property, per state law and common sense, people have the right to get up to your front door and at least knock without having an animal be entrusted with the decision of, is this a good guy or a bad guy?" said Tom Harris with King County Animal Control.

Harris says it's the legal responsibility of the pet owners to keep the dog confined, preferably in the back yard, and that just posting a sign is not good enough.

The girl's parents declined to talk with us, because they've now hired a lawyer to sue the dog's owners.

Meanwhile, the Browns remain focused on getting their dog back home. The dog is currently being held in quarantine at King County Animal Control for 10 days.

Everyday I think about him," Kate Brown said. "It just makes me cry, 'cause we raised him."

Federal Way city law says that dangerous dogs are prohibited within city limits.

There was already one report on record that this dog had attacked a woman in January, and now this incident, it's unclear what will happen to the animal.