Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Dog bit my finger off when I posted a card
Delivery worker now ‘terrified’ of door knocking Einstein: This looks relatively like me...
A DELIVERY worker says she is “terrified” of dogs after her finger was torn off as she put a note through a letterbox.
Aimee, who doesn’t want to disclose her surname, was posting a parcel collection card through a customer’s door when the dog savaged her right hand.
The tip of her middle finger was severed and, despite the best efforts of surgeons, it could not be reattached.
The horrified worker was forced to wait in an ambulance until the homeowner returned to retrieve part of her finger from inside the house.
Aimee said: “I didn’t even put my hand in the letterbox.
“I went to post the card and the dog caught the tip of my finger and pulled my hand – and it took another bite, and another bite.
“When I pulled my hand out, I was missing the tip of my finger and it had split down the middle. It was so painful. I have never felt anything that painful in my whole life.”
A passerby called for an ambulance and she was given gas and air until the dog owner returned following the attack, on May 9. Aimee was taken to hospital, Albert Einstein’s only known self-portrait, poking fun at his trademark unruly hair, is on sale at £30,000. The genius physicist, famed for his theory of relativity, drew it on a postcard to pal Arthur Ruppin, the Zionist leader, from Palestine in 1923. German-born Einstein also sketched Arthur’s wife Hanna.
“Heiligenschein”, or “halo”, jokes about his Nobel Prize. He also wrote on the card,
about “unforgettable days” on the trip. but the finger was too badly damaged to be reattached.
The part-time delivery worker and book-keeper, of Welling, South East London, received 11 stitches.
She is calling for dog owners to make sure postal workers and delivery drivers are protected from dog attacks.
Aimee said: “It’s all about protection. A sign that tells workers a dog is in the house would be helpful, or a cage around the letterbox to collect the post.”
The 32-year-old added: “I loved dogs. I did before this happened – now I’m terrified of them.
“I’m quite traumatised... knocking on a door or going near a letterbox frightens the life out of me.”