After being involved in a horrific dog attack at his Ohio home, a three-year-old boy nearly lost his arm. On March 2, Little Xavier was attacked by a Belgian Malinois and his family was caring for someone else. According to dad Josh Carr, it all started as the family prepared to sit down for the evening and unwind.
But what followed shortly thereafter was genuinely traumatic, and it would change the family’s lives for the foreseeable future, or else forever. Speaking to WKTC-TV, Josh said: “[Xavier] looked over at me and he said, ‘Hey, dad, I need something to drink’.
“So, I went over and made sure that everything was good, and he went into the kitchen and he just started screaming at the top of his lungs.” Of course, Josh went to the kitchen to find out what was wrong, and what he saw was quite horrifying.
“I just looked down and saw the blood, but there was a huge puddle of blood underneath him,” the dad-of-two said. “As cliché as it sounds, I immediately thought of Grey’s Anatomy, and I took my belt off that I was wearing and wrapped it around his arm to stop the bleeding as I was calling 911.”
It’s a good thing the dad is a Grey’s Anatomy fan since paramedics later told him that if he hadn’t put the belt around his son’s arm to stop the bleeding, he wouldn’t have survived. Josh added: “[The arm] was held on by about two inches of muscle and skin on the back of the arm, and they had to reconstruct pretty much the entire arm, the bicep, the triceps.”
After the horrific attack, Xavier has undergone three major surgeries to fix his arm, and his outlook is good. “He’s got a very high chance of getting full function back in his arm, in his hand,” Josh said. “It’s going to be limited, but he’s got a high chance of being able to use that again partially because he was at such a young age.”
Doctors believe that because Xavier is so young, he will be able to regain full use of his arm. Unfortunately, several more surgeries are required, with a two-year recovery phase. The boy’s family has put up a GoFundMe page to help with the medical bills that will be paid in the coming years. On March 9, the dog was put to sleep.