Doctors were unable to reattach a 4-year-old boy’s hand after a dog chewed it off when he reached under a neighbor’s fence to play with her two dogs.
The boy, who lives next door to the dog owner, had a white sock on his hand when he reached under the fence to play with Polar and Bear, according to Buzzfeed News.
Layton Fire Battalion Chief Jason Cook told the Standard-Examiner that one of the dogs, a Siberian Husky named Bear, bit the boy’s arm about 2 or 3 inches above the wrist. Cook said the dog amputated the entire hand.
The boy’s parents were able to staunch the bleeding until medics arrived.
The boy, who was not identified, was airlifted to a Salt Lake City, Utah hospital where he is in stable condition after emergency surgery on Sunday.
Cook told local Fox News affiliate Fox13 that paramedics and police spent hours searching for the boy’s hand, but couldn’t find it.
“The fear is that it was probably ingested by the dog that bit him,” Cook said.
Police considered killing both dogs to retrieve the boy’s hand, but they decided against it after speaking with the boy’s surgeon.
“It does not appear that reattachment is going to be an option for us,” Cook said.
Both dogs were taken by animal control officials to be quarantined for rabies for 10 days. A decision will be made whether to euthanize the dogs, which is proper procedure after a human is killed or severely injured.
A Google maps search of the address shows a house with a high vinyl fence around it.
Jessica Nusz, a woman claiming to be a friend of the dog owner, created a petition to save the dogs from being put down.
The petition has generated more than 35,000 signatures from dog lovers.
Nusz also created a Gofundme page that reached its goal of $400 “to help my best friend get her pups back from animal control.”
Nusz wrote:
“My best friends dog was involved in an unfortunate accident yesterday where a little boy stuck his arm through a fence and he had a sock on his arm. Bear who was playing with what he thought was a toy he bit down too hard and didn’t see that there was a child on the other side of the fence. With him being a dog he thought it was a game of tug of war and he bit down too hard and took a lower portion of his arm.
“This situation is unfortunate on both sides. And now both dogs are in quarantine at Davis county animal control. There are fears that bear might be put down and he doesn’t deserve to be put down for this freak accident.”
