A teenage girl was left needing 40 stitches after a photoshoot with her adorable dog went haywire.
Dogs are our best friends. We love them more than life itself – and while they may never understand just how we care, we can certainly try and show them with lots of pats and cuddles.
Alas, at the end of the day, they’re still animals. And, sometimes, like a human can lose their temper for no good reason, your pet may nip at you. That said, this teen was left with a mighty wound when her pooch got fed up of posing for a photo.
Lara Sanson – from Tucumán, Argentina – was trying to get a good picture with her gorgeous German Shepherd. The 17-year-old was cuddling the dog, named Kenai, and trying to get that perfect snap, however things went wrong in a split-second.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Kenai bit Lara’s face. The incredible (albeit, scary) photo shows that moment in motion, as the dog’s jaws widen around the teen’s face before the teeth pierced her skin.
Lara told local news outlet La Nacion, as per The Daily Star: ‘I do not know if I touched its hip or if it reacted like this because it is old, or it was because I hugged it and scared it.’
Following the bite, Lara had to undergo a two-hour operation, with 40 stitches needed for her face and inside her mouth due to injuries to her gum. While she’s currently suffering inflammation, she is expected to make a full recovery.
Lara also said the dog won’t be put down following the attack, as she insists it wasn’t intentional. A local vet also told the news outlet that Kenai may have bit the girl due to its young age, saying: ‘Its pains are growing and pain could have generated this reaction.’
Lara posted the photos – capturing the unfortunate series of events – to Twitter on January 14, and they very quickly went viral. At the time of writing, her original tweet has racked up more than 72,000 retweets and 346,000 likes.
The teen also posted an additional image of the other side of her face, showing the smaller (but still significant) damage done from the dog’s lower jaw.
Lara wrote in the tweet: ‘I didn’t save myself from the other side either.’ More than 11,000 people have replied to the post too, offering their messages of support and telling similar tales of their dogs biting them.
Love your dog unconditionally – just remember to be careful.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.