Samantha Redding was 20 years old and had known the dog since it was a puppy.
It was a Spanish Mastiff cross with a broad-headed Akita, owned by the father of a friend of hers, in the United Kingdom. In January, during a brief visit to that house, the animal approached, growled and, within seconds, disfigured her face. Samantha remembers little: the growl, the pain, and then the emergency tracheotomy.
Since then, her life has consisted of skin grafts on her arm and leg, scars on her face, neck and throat, and nerve damage that reached her gums and teeth. The surgeries are repeated every eight weeks to protect the graft, and she still faces at least three more, including one to reshape her lip. For five weeks, she did not let her younger siblings see her: she did not want to frighten them with what was left of her face.
