SAVAGED IN HUSKY ATTACK PAL’S DOG MAULED ME LIKE A RAG... I THOUGHT I’D DIE
A MUM has told how she was savaged in a terrifying 45-minute attack by a friend’s dog.
Rachel Anderson, 39, was looking after Adel Johnson’s two children on Boxing Day last year when Siberian husky Storm went for her.
The huge animal locked its jaws on her face before pulling her to the floor and dragging her into the kitchen.
It then tore into her arm as Rachel screamed in agony, fearing she would not survive.
The mum of two said: “I remember it dragging me side to side by the arm.
“At one stage I thought it was going to release me, but it was treating me like a chew toy. It was like a horror film.”
Rachel needed nearly a dozen operations to repair her gaping wounds. She said surgeons feared they might have to amputate her arm.
But the limb was saved when medics sewed it inside her stomach for four weeks while the skin healed.
Rachel, from Skegness, Lincs, said the dog’s 33-year-old owner has never apologised – a claim Adel totally denies.
The women met while working in a convenience store.
Kind Rachel offered to look after her then-friend’s kids so she could enjoy a night out. On previous visits Storm had been in the garden, but last Boxing Day he was in the kitchen.
He pounced when Rachel went to get one of the children a drink around midnight. She said: “It stood up and wagged its tail and I presumed it was going to be fine. I heard it before I saw it really. It was on my face.
“I screamed. The next thing I knew the dog got hold of my arm, and dragged me off the settee and into the kitchen where it attacked me.
“It got to the point I thought, ‘I’m going to die here in this kitchen.’
“I could see blood everywhere. I could see my face out of the corner of my eye. My arm was all ripped open. I could see skin and fat everywhere.
“It was like I was his rag toy, moving its head back and forth.”
As Storm chewed on her arm, Rachel yelled out to the children she was babysitting and instructed them to grab a knife from a counter and stab the dog.
One of the youngsters followed Rachel’s orders. The brave girl then threw Storm into the garden.
Rachel said she rang Adel but got no answer, so she phoned 999 for an ambulance.
One paramedic was so horrified by her injuries he had to step outside for air.
When police arrived they shot the dog dead. Rachel spent nearly two months in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, and had 10 skin graft operations.
She then caught a severe infection which “ate” her arm muscle.
The grafts from the top of her arm refused to take and doctors feared they would have to amputate.
To save the limb, surgeon Rajive Mathew Jose cut a flap in her stomach and sewed the arm inside for a month to allow new skin to grow over it.
Rachel gave statements to the police but after 10 months was told the case would go no further because the dog had been killed.
She said: “There has to be some kind of recognition. If you have a guard dog, have a guard dog. This was supposed to be a pet.”
She is still receiving treatment and cannot use her right hand properly. Adel told us: “I don’t want to comment on the incident. My children and I have been through a lot already with this and don’t want it to be dragged up again. “It is completely untrue that I didn’t apologise. It is causing distress to me and my children.”