The postwoman had the last knuckle of her middle finger torn off when the dog chomped her as she pushed the card through the opening.
Aimee, 32, who didn’t want to give her second name, said she’d been putting a ‘sorry we missed you’ note through the door when the dog savaged her finger.
She eventually managed to wrestle her hand free but left behind the end of her middle finger. Unfortunately medics were unable to reattach her fingertip so Aimee will have to live the rest of her life with only nine fingernails.
Aimee had ten stitches in her finger but doctors were unable to reattach the tip
She said: ‘I didn’t even put my hand in the letterbox, I went to post the card and the dog caught the tip of my finger and pulled my hand, and it took another bite, and another bite.
‘When I pulled my hand out I was missing the tip of my finger and it had split down the middle – the inside was exposed. The pain was excruciating.’
Aimee was finishing her morning shift on May 9 at around 11am when she attempted to deliver post at a property near her home in Welling, south east London. She said: “I knocked on the door and waited, but I couldn’t hear anything, so procedure says I should put a ‘missed delivery’ card through the letterbox.
‘The dog inside didn’t make a peep – it’s like it was lying in wait.
The postwoman is now too scared to carry on her job delivering mail
‘There was no sign on the door to say there was a dog there, no cage around the letterbox and no external letterbox.’ The type of dog that attacked Aimee is still unknown, but it’s thought to be a mastiff-type.
Aimee’s screams alerted a nearby pedestrian who helped her get her hand free before an ambulance was called where she was taken to Queen Elizabeth hospital in nearby Charlton, and then later to a specialist wing of St Thomas Hospital in central London. Doctors closed the end of Aimee’s finger with 11 stitches but they weren’t able to reattach the tip.
The dog’s owner returned while Aimee was being treated by medics at the scene and had to let in the paramedic inside to retrieve the end of the finger.
The attack has left Aimee with no feeling in one side of the finger
She recalled: ‘They did everything right, they got me there quick enough but it was too badly damaged. ‘The dog had bitten into the tip of the finger that still had bone in it.’
The injury has left Aimee psychologically unable to carry on being a postwoman due to a fear of letterboxes, and physically unable to drive as she has no feeling in the finger on her right hand.
She says she’s traumatised by the incident, leaving her in constant fear of dogs. She said: ‘I loved dogs. I did before this happened – now I’m terrified of them. ‘I still have no feeling down one side of my finger and am still unable to bend the knuckle I do have left.