A 3-year-old girl in Louisiana can no longer smile after the dog her family was fostering suddenly snapped and chomped into the toddler’s face, her mom said.
Little Emily Roark of Slidell was rushed to the hospital on March 16 after the animal attack, Rebekka Bolline said in a GoFundMe she launched to cover medical expenses.
The toddler suffered muscle damage and needed stitches below her eye and near her mouth. Doctors said she won’t be able to smile or eat on one side of her face and may have suffered damage to her tear duct as well, Bolline said.
Emily will require multiple reconstruction surgeries moving forward, he mom added.
Bolline said Emily was “softly petting” the 3-year-old dog named Tater Tot when it randomly attacked her less than 24 hours after the family took the foster pooch in, the Daily Mail reported.
The dog latched onto the girl’s face and violently shook her from side to side. Bolline said the dog eventually released its grip, but not before it “ingested” some of the toddler’s flesh, according to the outlet.
“When the dog bit and latched onto her, she didn’t make a sound,” the frightened mom of two said. “Her body went limp and she was being thrown all over the place.”
She said she was terrified that the dog was going to maul her daughter to death.
“At that moment, I just thought that she wasn’t going to make it and that she was going to die. I didn’t know how to help her,” Bolline said. “I couldn’t get the dog off her. I kept screaming.”
Animal control retrieved Tater Tot from the family’s home and euthanized the dog while the family was at the hospital, according to the outlet.
Emily, whose pleads for a puppy led the family to foster the dog, is now afraid of animals, Bolline said.
“Every once in a while, she’s in a lot of pain she’ll point to herself and say, ‘mummy I die, mummy I die. Puppy was hungry,’ which is heart-breaking,” Bolline said.