DETROIT – Monet Shaw should be focused on middle school and her dream of being an actress. Instead, she is being homeschooled and recovering from a brutal dog bite.

Shaw, 11, was attacked by a dog in June while walking with her aunt. She had just had her hair done for her fifth-grade graduation and had called her dad to come get her.

"When I pulled up, it was less than probably like two minutes and when I pulled up, it just seemed like everything happened so fast," said Morris Hollfield, Monet's father.

Hollfield said the dog knocked down Monet's aunt and went straight for his daughter.

"He was dragging her down the street, on her feet. He was dragging her and it took one person to step in before I stepped in to save my daughter," Hollfield said.

Hollfield is thankful for a neighbor with a shovel who tried to stop the dog. His daughter's injuries were devastating.

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"My mind was, I don't know how long, is my daughter going to live?" Hollfield said.

"I can talk about it now, but the first two, three days I couldn't," said Patrice Shaw, Monet's mother. "Her left foot was really damaged. They had to get stitches on the side, the top, and underneath. The arm was, the bone was sticking out the arm, and like half of the, most of her arm was gone."

Doctors at Children's Hospital of Michigan rushed to save Monet's left arm.

"The team of surgeons, the orthopedic surgeon reattached the (arm) bone ... the vascular surgeons took a vein from her leg to do a bypass graft to reestablish the blood flow to her arm," said Dr. Arlene Rozzelle, chief of plastic surgery for Children's Hospital of Michigan. "And then another issue was because of the way the skin was damaged, the skin did not fully heal so then she needed to have muscle flap taken from her back to resurface the upper arm area."

Monet has endured several surgeries, including one as recently as October, physical and occupational therapy and nearly two months in the hospital.

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She lost strength on her left leg because of her injury and she lost feeling and function in her arm and hand. Doctors say it will take two years of physical therapy to get that back.

"She's healing up faster and better now, but that's two years, that's two years of stuff that she lost as a kid," Hollfield said.

"This year does seem to be that there are many more dog bites in general and many more serious ones this year," Rozzelle said.

Children's Hospital of Michigan tells Local 4 that so far this year, it has treated 135 children for injuries from dog bites. That includes patients from metro Detroit and around the state.

Hollfield wants people to watch what they’re breeding and raising because his family is not the only one to suffer from a dog attack.

"I've been in this hospital for over a month and a half, and I've been seeing a lot of kids come here from dog bites, injuries that these dogs did. My daughter is just one that hit the news," Hollfield said.

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He warns other families to be careful with big dogs around their children and wants people to keep control of their dogs.

"Probably most dog bites are just a small little bite and they might just require some washing out, maybe plus minus stitches," Rozzelle said.

"When you have a bigger dog that's been bred to be athletic, and strong, and is now bigger than the child, then you're much more likely to get a more significant injury."

Monet's parents say this dog attack changed their daughter's life in an instant, both physically and emotionally.

"Sometimes her injury brings her back to flashbacks ... she'll scream out to her mom or she'll scream out to me, 'Dad, the dog bit me. Dad, the dog bit me.' And her mom had to put in her mind, 'Baby you're all right. There's not a dog there,'" Hollfield said.

They admire their daughter's strength.

"It's a hurting feeling, but I'm just glad that she's still here because it could have been way worse," Shaw said.

Detroit Animal Care and Control said the dog in this case was euthanized.

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