(Newser) – A father in Florida shot and disemboweled one of the family dogs yesterday in an effort to retrieve his son's finger, the Bradenton Herald reports. Luis Brignoni, 41, pulled the finger out and rushed his 11-year-old to a hospital in St. Petersburg—but doctors said the nerve damage was too extensive to reattach the finger. It apparently all started when the boy, Fernando, tried to pet a family-owned caged dog—a Malamute-wolf mix—and the animal bit his hand.

Fernando's 13-year-old brother hit the dog until it let go, but by then the finger was bitten off. Brignoni figured he had no choice: "I said, 'I've got to go find the finger,'" he explains. "I got my gun and I popped him." Despite the shock, Fernando is recovering—actually smiling in one photo—and Brignoni, a minister at the nondenominational Love Family Church, is reflecting on the event. "You don't know what you will do for your child," he says. "You don't know where you get the strength from." (Read more dog stories.)

