Family dog rips off owner face while trying to Console her

Korinne Mostensen shared her story of a traumatic incident with her four-year-old dog, Niko, whose behavior changed drastically due to a brain tumor. 

In November 2022, while trying to console her dog, Niko, Korinne was shocked when he suddenly clamped his jaw onto her nose, ripping off a portion of it. 

While she was Rushed to Lone Peak Hospital in Utah, doctors found her nose broken with a quarter-sized piece missing.

Korinne revealed that Niko had begun experiencing seizures, but he had never shown aggression before the attack. A veterinary examination later confirmed he had an aggressive brain tumor, explaining the unexpected behavioral change.

Despite the permanent scar and the shocking nature of the event, Korinne says she doesn’t blame Niko for the attack, attributing it instead to his health condition.

She said: “We’d had Niko for four years and he was the world’s perfect dog and had never done anything wrong.

“He was having a few health issues and he’d had a couple of seizures but at this point he hadn’t been aggressive.

“We were planning on taking him to the vets but his appointment wasn’t for another few weeks.

“We were just relaxing as a family and he [the dog] had had one of these weird little episodes so I got down to make sure he was okay and just out of nowhere I saw his face come at mine.

“It was half a second. It was so fast and one bite. It all happened so fast and I was in shock as I never imagined my sweet little dog would do this.

“I remember I ran to the bathroom and all I saw was blood. I knew it was bad but I hadn’t felt the pain yet as I was in shock.”

“My nose looked horrible and I hated it. The bone in my nose had been completely broken in half and then he [my dog] had bitten a chunk underneath.

“It was deformed and you could see a chunk out of it from the side. I was really self-conscious about it. I found it hard to look in the mirror at myself.”

She continued: “After the injury, we first thought that we were going to have to take our dog to the vets and get it put down as we couldn’t have it in the house when we had children.

“But after we calmed down, we then thought that maybe there is something wrong with him and we could find out what and get our dog back.

“Before we rushed to conclusions we gave him the benefit of the doubt and took him to the vets to see if he could be fixed.

“In the meantime we muzzle trained him and anytime he was out he wore a muzzle.

“We then took him to a veterinary neurological specialist. He was getting worse at this point and was having more seizures.

“He then started getting aggressive with our other dog and we had to have him in a muzzle 24/7 and we felt so bad about this.

“We went and spoke to the specialist and they confidently said that they believed him to have an aggressive brain tumour that was making him behave this way.

“How fast he was going down hill, there wasn’t a lot they could do for him so we decided to put him down as this was the best option as it wasn’t fair on him.”

she added: “For us, I’m really glad we got that closure because every time I would have looked at my nose, there would have been this anger there and thinking all these horrible things.

“But we got closure and can now remember the good memories and the four years of the perfect dog we had.”