Olivia Quast: Rescue dog rips off Connecticut woman’s nose, leaving her mangled with ligament and nerve damage
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT: An artist from Connecticut had her nose chewed off by her boyfriend's pit bull mix rescue dog after the animal was startled by her teeth-whitening tool. Olivia Quast, 30, of Thomaston, Connecticut, had terrible injuries to her face and arm on February 3 as a result of an encounter with her boyfriend Graeme Stasyshyn's 6-year-old dog, named Bentley, whom he's owned for four years.
As Quast touched her face, she was startled to discover that her nose "wasn't there," The Independent reported from an interview with Kennedy News and Media. Quast claimed that the animal continued to attack her, mutilating her left arm, before she was able to fight the dog off and call for help.
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'He took my nose'
Quast hypothesized that Bentley, who had suffered abuse as a puppy, may have been startled and frightened by her UV-lit teeth-whitening mouthpiece. She said the dog’s eyes "changed" and described the animal as "dissociated."
"He lunged, and he got my nose first, I was in shock and disbelief," the woman recalled. "I just stared at him. It never dawned on me that he was going to keep attacking me, because why would he? I put my hand on my nose and he lunged at my arm twice more." "It wasn’t a nip. He got me three times. He took my nose. I was in shock ... I punched him in the head and he bit me again ... He came at me again. I kicked him in the side and he ran away," Quast told The Middleton Press.
Quast will need her nose and part of her face reconstructed
Quast quickly called her mother for help after the attack and was then transferred to the hospital. She will need her nose and a portion of her face to be rebuilt after suffering a hand injury, ligament damage, and nerve damage. She said that despite her wounds, she was not upset with Bentley for the assault. "I’ve never been mad at him for a second," she said. Bentley was held for 10 days to check whether he had rabies and then euthanized.
Miranda Isobel, Quast's sister, and Emelie Winiski, her best friend, created a GoFundMe campaign for Quast and have raised a total of almost $68K of their $100K target. The post read, "She no longer has a nose. She now has 2 plates, 8 screws and 2 pins in her arm, and fractures that will take upwards of 6-8 months to heal. She has significant ligament and nerve damage in her hand that will take 9-12 months to heal." The post concluded, "She has a long road to recovery ahead of her and every little bit counts."