The Dog Tore Chunks Off Me. I Hid for Hours Before Help Arrived

I've had a dog since I was a child. I've always loved dogs. I've never owned less than four at one time. The breed didn't matter. I preferred large dogs, but I've had a couple of small ones too. I was very accustomed to dogs; I never went without one.

I had a 40-acre farm with cows, chickens, goats—all the animals you'd expect. I'd picked up a dog for a woman in another state and was housing it while we were waiting for transport to her via a mutual acquaintance.

He was a mutt, but clearly had a lot of pit bull in him. He had an enormous, blocky head. He was tall and stood above my waist. He weighed about 75 pounds and was lanky, but powerful.

I had the dog neutered, but from the moment I picked him up, I knew he was dangerous. I had never encountered a dog like this one before. In my head, I just thought he needed time to settle down.

For a while, I had him in my house, but I wasn't comfortable with that. Although I didn't have any issues, he occasionally growled at me. I moved him to the farm because it was a larger space and I had other dogs there.

He got along beautifully with other dogs and was never aggressive. Another dog bit him once, but he didn't respond or fight back. It was like he had his feelings hurt.

Life went on, and I think I let my guard down. I'd forgotten the nature of this particular dog.

I'd been gone all day to pick up some calves and came back to the farm at midnight. I had him in a large kennel inside of a feed room. I saw he hadn't gone to the bathroom so I decided to walk him.

I grabbed a high-powered flashlight because there wasn't power hooked up at the farm. I put the leash around his neck and walked him out.

I heard him growl at me.

It was too late to put him back. I thought he might stop growling when we got out into the open. But as I walked around, he fully attacked me.

He latched hold of my right arm and bit it several times. I still had the leash in my left hand. It was a heavy-duty slip lead, and I tried very hard to choke him, but I didn't have the strength.

My eldest daughter and I had been talking about dogs just a month or so before because a woman and her two children had been attacked. Both the children died.

We talked about how to stop a dog attack, and one way is to choke it. I remember telling my daughter as I was trying to choke him with the leash that I just didn't have the strength.

Then he grabbed hold of my left arm. I realized that he was going to kill me. There was no question about it. The attack wasn't going to stop.

He went back to my right arm: I heard the bone break.

I was screaming, begging him to stop.

The dog bit my thigh and took a huge chunk out.

I wondered: How am I going to get away? I can't go back into the building because of the way it was designed. I couldn't shut the door behind me. And I couldn't get away from him; it was a vast area of land.

I knew my hands were pretty torn up, but I never looked at them. I never looked at my body, but I knew what was working and what wasn't. I also knew there was nothing around me that I could use as a weapon.

There was a trench for underground power to be run in, but the cables hadn't been laid yet. So I stepped down into the trench, which was about 18 inches wide and 32 inches deep.

When my children were small, we watched a lot of Animal Planet. I remember thinking: If you get attacked by a bear, there are certain bears you fight and there are certain bears you play dead.

Fighting this dog wasn't working for me, so I thought I'd play dead. I curled up in a fetal position down in this trench. I was tight in there.

I have very long hair. It was up in a ponytail with a bun on the top of my head. I was terrified he would grab the top of my head and scalp me, so I curled up in a ball as much as I could.

He grabbed my left shoulder and I felt my shirt rip. Then he sniffed in my right ear. The whole time I didn't move or make a sound. I just froze. He sniffed my ear again, and then he left.

I was too afraid to get up, so I just stayed there.

While I was being attacked, I remember talking to my children as if they were there. When I was in the trench, waiting for divine intervention, I remember praying and thinking that, if I die, my youngest daughter would be the one who finds me.

I can't say that I was afraid to die. I wasn't. I knew that was a strong possibility. But I couldn't let my 19-year-old daughter find my body.

She would come out here later to tend to the animals and find me—and I just can't let that happen. Honestly, that was my driving motivation to survive.

It started pouring with rain. I was at the very corner of the building and there weren't any gutters. The rain poured off the building onto my back. But I didn't care. I didn't move. I stayed there until I couldn't feel my limbs anymore; just pins and needles.

I had to get up and find help, but I didn't know where the dog was and had no idea how much time had passed. I was very weak and traumatized.

I knew I was alone; nobody lived on this farm.

There was a neighbor, and the road in front of the farm was quite busy, even at night. I was scared to walk around to the front of the barn because that's where all the cattle were and so probably where the dog was, too.

The flashlight I had dropped on the ground was so powerful that I couldn't see behind it; I could only see where it was shining, which was towards the road.

I walked out towards the road because I had just heard a car pass. It was about 250 feet away, and it was misty out there from the rain. I knew there was a home at least a thousand feet away too.

A car came down the road. I thought it was my chance, but they didn't stop. I don't know if they saw me or not. I don't blame them; it was the middle of the night.

As I'm walking down the road, I see something out in the mist. I thought it was a deer at first. But it wasn't.

It was the dog. And he was coming at me again.

I froze and pulled my arms into my body because I didn't want him to sniff them and realize who I was. I was standing in the middle of the road and had no way to get away from this dog.

He sniffed my arms, and there was another dog with him that I was very familiar with. He was our resident hound. Then they frolicked off into the woods.

I realized it was too far to the house. I knew where the dogs were now, so decided to use the opportunity to get back into my barn. I walked back as fast as I was able to.

I only had three fingers that worked on my left hand. My right hand wasn't working at all because the arm was broken. But I was able to turn the door handle and get into the barn and close the door.

When I finally got back into the barn, I did feel a huge sense of relief, like: At least I've survived this long.

WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.

It was pitch black. I found my daughter's little flashlight that she kept in the barn. I was so thirsty. I turned on the tap and drank some water. I had a full kitchen in there and a place to lie down.

So I sat on the bed and screamed and cried. I'd lost my phone—I heard it ping, but had no idea where it was—and I passed out

Once I was inside and able to drink water, I felt that I was going to survive.

The reason I didn't bleed out was because the artery was crushed, which stopped the blood flow. But it was a pretty gruesome scene.

Time is so slow when you're alone and you don't know what's going to happen next.

I had a 5 A.M. alarm set and it went off. I sat up in the bed. But I couldn't stand up; I no longer had the strength. I slid off the bed and my phone was on the floor underneath.

I called 911 and had to walk them through where I was because there's no address at this remote property. They called my son too, who lived about 10 minutes away, and they all arrived at about the same time.

I had requested when I called the 911 operator that the sheriff shoot the dog who was running loose. He was a danger.

As soon as I got into the ambulance, one of the EMTs was cutting off my clothes and the other gave me something for the pain. I'd been waiting five hours for this nightmare to end.

I heard the sheriff come over the radio and say the dog's coming down the drive. I thought: Please shoot him.

I heard: Pow!

I woke up two days later.

At that time, they didn't know if the dog was rabid. I did, because I had his vaccination records, but I wasn't awake to tell them.

They needed to preserve the head, which is necessary to determine if the dog had rabies. The sheriff shot the dog twice in the body—but it didn't slow the dog down.

My son was standing at the back of the ambulance in the driveway. The dog came towards my son despite being shot twice. The sheriff tased the dog to keep him from attacking my son.

In hospital, the surgeons were very concerned about the fact that I was out for so long. I don't remember the first few days.

The doctors were unbelievably caring and worried I would lose my right arm, not only due to the damage, but also because of infection. I was a dirty, nasty mess from sitting in that trench full of water.

I spent six weeks exactly in the hospital. I still went home on an IV antibiotic because they kept having to cut away tissue. They removed part of the bone of my ulna because it was so infected and necrotic.

I'm not a person that likes to sit idle. It's very hard for me, but I was proud of myself that I managed to sit in that bed for six weeks. Sometimes I couldn't even move my arms because they operated on them every five days.

The attack was almost a year and a half ago. It took about a year to get as good as I'm going to. I have very good use of my left arm and my left hand. I have a couple of fingers on my left hand that don't function like the rest. But they function.

My right hand, however, is still very swollen. I have three fingers that work pretty well on my right hand, and I am right-handed, but because my ulna is broken and there's a missing piece of the bone, it no longer connects to my wrist.

There are certain things that I cannot do. I don't cook because I can't handle a knife. I can't even brush my teeth with my right hand. I can write, but a lot of things I still do with my left hand. I'm not comfortable carrying anything in my right arm. It feels odd.

I remember purposely thinking I wanted to protect my torso when he was attacking me and I think that's the reason that my right arm is so trashed. I sacrificed my arm to preserve my body.

But, honestly, I am very surprised at how well I have recovered. I would say I'm probably back to 90 percent.

On the psychological side, the recovery has been very good. I have always been a pretty strong person.

That's not to say I don't have my moments. I still have six dogs. Even when my own dogs come up and get in my face, that might upset me. And I'll randomly cry for no reason sometimes.

I don't know that anything "triggers" these feelings. It just kind of washes over me.

Every once in a while, I feel sorry for myself. It's hard to imagine that I was attacked by a dog. But it happened. It's over. I'm moving on.

I look at dogs differently. Now I judge them by: Is that dog big enough to kill me?

In Florida, where I'm from, there have been several fatalities from dogs. One of them was a postal carrier earlier in the same year that I was attacked. And there was another woman outside of Jacksonville who lost a leg in a dog attack.

Another woman who lives in the same county as me lost her life from a dog attack. They were all attacked by loose dogs.

The mail carrier's family got together with their local congressman and came up with a Dangerous Dog Act. They took it before the state congress to get the bill passed, but have not been able to yet.

I went to Tallahassee to testify and give my thoughts about dangerous dogs and how there needs to be a registry of dogs who have attacked people and animals.

The proposed act was going to create a registry so owners of such dogs are forced to keep them contained, and the county can keep tabs on it.

There is no such law currently. But it is something that they're hoping to get passed soon. We need to make the owners accountable for their dogs.

These dangerous dogs can't be left to roam the streets freely.

Stephanie P. Walker is a food truck owner, business coach, and dog attack survivor. She teaches strategies on what to do if attacked by a dog and how to overcome the trauma.

All views expressed are the author's own.

As told to Shane Croucher.

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