Akita Bites, Amputations, an Eventful 2025, and Coping With a New Normal

Dog bites, amputations, and accidents, oh my! Even though it is only May, my husband and I have had a very eventful year so far, which is why this blog has been neglected for the last two months. I figure I owe my readers an explanation for my absence, as explaining what’s been going on will also explain why the content on this blog will likely start including some new topics in the coming months.

Behavioral Issues With American Akitas

For the last four years, we had an American Akita that we adopted as a puppy. We had read many warnings about behavioral issues with akitas in general and that regardless of whether it was an American Akita or a Japanese Akita, they had a tendency to get territorial and randomly snap. To try and prevent such behavior, we did a lot of research and invested a lot of time in his training, consulting with a few specialist trainers.

Every trainer we worked with and vet he met commented on how well-behaved and obedient our dog was for an American Akita. Last summer I had noticed some changes in his behavior that made me a bit uncomfortable, but we again consulted specialized trainers and made some adjustments in our house to prevent the behaviors I was seeing. All seemed to be going better for a while.

And then he turned four.

An American Akita Bite and Indecisions

Literally the week he turned four, he was suddenly being really standoffish with me, barking at our neighbors like crazy, and being much more aggressive in trying to catch the wild cats in the neighborhood. One afternoon in mid-April, my husband was interacting with him in a way he’s done thousands of times before to remind him of the hierarchy of “the pack” in our household, and the dog snapped.

I almost don’t want to write how it played out because only recently has the image stopped randomly flashing through my head. Essentially, the dog instantaneously bared his teeth and moved to headbutt my husband. He moved so quickly with no real warning there wasn’t time for my husband to move.

The dog left puncture marks on either side of his nose, as well as breaking my husband’s nose. The puncture marks split down the side of his nose and looked similar to what I can only explain as fish gills. There was so much blood all over our house that it triggered my secondary exposure trauma from what happened here in Israel on October 7th. The image of the dog snapping and the pools of blood everywhere played over and over again in my head for weeks.

My husband spent six hours in the ER and had to be cleared by an optometrist because the puncture marks were so close to his eyes. He was incredibly lucky that he didn’t lose an eye. He now has scars on either side of his nose, but luckily, they’re not super noticeable. He still has a deviated septum that will need to be fixed with surgery.

This left us with a decision of what to do. Despite how much we loved and adored him, neither of us felt we could ever fully trust the dog again, but such an event also wasn’t enough to have him deemed a dangerous dog and put down. We spent three weeks trying to find a farm to send him to so he could put his work dog instincts to better use than he could living in an apartment with us.

However, as soon as anyone heard what breed he was, no one was willing to take him. We knew that trying to re-home him wasn’t an option because if he had turned on us and then felt abandoned by us, he was more likely to do worse harm to whoever we gave him to, and that wasn’t a risk we were comfortable with. We were stuck.

Another American Akita Bite and a Partial Finger Amputation

Exactly three weeks later, it was apparently my turn to get bitten. While I had been very cautious in how I approached him during those three weeks, I still never expected what would happen. I no longer approached him near his face and if he came to me for a hug, I was mindful to approach him from the side so he didn’t have direct access to my face or neck. Even that didn’t protect me because I bent down to hug him to say goodnight, the same way I’d done a million times, and he jumped up, trying to bite my face.

I managed to mostly protect my face with only minor scratches and pushed him off, but that put my finger in the line of fire. He bit down and took off the end of my middle finger. We again had an apartment full of blood. Blood that I continued to find in very random spots for weeks.

I spent the night in the hospital and had an early morning surgery to try and have it reattached. Unfortunately, because it was just the last section of the finger, all of the blood vessels and such that are needed for reattachment are too small in this area, and they were unable to reattach it. My middle finger was now an amputation. Had the dog taken off a larger section or even all of the finger, they would have been able to reattach it.

My husband tried to take the dog to multiple shelters but all refused to take him because of his breed. We then had to deal with a ton of bureaucracy to get him put down so he wouldn’t be a risk to anyone else.

Coping With a Partial Amputation

My amputation is relatively minor compared to what so many others who have had to go through an amputation have to cope with. In terms of pain, the first few days were pretty brutal, especially since we live somewhere that really avoids prescribing strong painkillers. They gave me optalgin, which works similarly to NSAIDs, and a medication that combines a low dose of tramadol and paracetamol. They did not help.

After the first two weeks, the pain got better, but would throb anytime I exercised or did anything that got my heart rate up. It still hurts at random, but mostly after I’ve directly bumped it into things. As someone with ADHD and autism, I’m incredibly prone to bumping into things, so this still happens far too often.

Beyond the pain, it’s still been a big adjustment to cope with. There’s a lot of resentment because a part of my body is just gone forever and that’s hard to process, even if it’s a very minor amputation. My doctor gave me two months off work and while some people would have used that time to focus on their blog and drive trafffic up with all their extra time, I avoided my computer as much as possible because it’s one of the most obvious reminders of what happened every time I needed to use my middle finger to reach certain keys on the keyboard and I just wasn’t really ready to cope with that.

Complex and Non-Complex Feelings

Despite the anger and resentment I still feel about the amputation sometimes, I’ve largely just been in radical acceptance. I know it could have been much worse than it was so I’m trying not to dwell. There’s also no use in being angry about it all the time because it wouldn’t change anything. Anger wouldn’t erase anything that happened, it definitely wouldn’t reverse the amputation, and it wouldn’t make the adjustment any easier.

In terms of no longer having the dog, I thought I would be sadder. After my husband was bitten, I cried almost every time the dog came over to me for a snuggle. Most of the time, he was just this fluffy ball of cuteness and it broke my heart how things played out and knowing we had to get rid of him. I think I did a lot of my grieving then because after I was bitten, my emotions towards him were just gone. I kept expecting that initial reaction to settle and that I’d start to miss him, but it just never came. It never came for my husband either.

In the week after the amputation, all we could notice was how calm our home was. We no longer had to intensely monitor him for any tiny behavior changes, as akitas notoriously give little warning before acting out. We didn’t need to watch every single interaction between him and our other older dog, whose behavior he had “corrected” a few times and resulted in injuries. I wasn’t being startled or distracted numerous times a day when he’d bark at neighbors despite knowing he shouldn’t. Our house was calm and peaceful for the first time we realized in four years.

A Motorcycle Accident

After the two dog bite incidents, our friends had started commenting on how much we’ve been through this year. I don’t talk about it on the blog much, but my husband has lost multiple friends and family members in this war. On top of those losses, in February, his four-year-old cousin died in a drowning accident when he got stuck under a pool floaty. Like I said, 2025 has been eventful and thus far, not in a good way. After what happened with my finger, we thought we had to be at the end of this string of bad events, but we were wrong.

Back in January, my husband had insisted on getting a motorcycle because he was tired of losing hours of his day to traffic. I was strongly against it, not because I don’t trust his riding capabilities but because motorcycles are at the mercy of the road conditions and other drivers. And other drivers are too often idiots. As much as I love being right, this was not something I wanted to be right about. Unfortunately, I was.

In April, while on his way to work, another driver cut across four lanes of traffic and almost hit my husband. He swerved to get out of the way, only to slip on an oil patch on the road. Thankfully, another driver saw it happen and turned his truck to block traffic from hitting my husband, who was now rolling across the highway. I want to cry every time I think about how lucky it was that he wasn’t hit and how thankful I am for the driver who blocked traffic.

My husband had road rash all across his lower back, a dislocated shoulder, and torn tendons in his feet. He will need to start physical therapy for both his shoulder and the tendons in his feet but is otherwise healed now, other than his longing for the bike I obviously made him get rid of.

When I arrived at the hospital, I asked him how soon he had the thought that I wouldn’t let him keep the bike. He replied, “Oh, as I was rolling.” I’m just glad he knew and accepted why he couldn’t keep it without it needing to be a drawn-out argument between us. I know he’s annoyed to be sitting in traffic again every day but at least he is safe.

Emotional Drain Post-Accidents and Amputation

Needless to say, these have all been horrible and draining experiences. I had zero motivation to do things on the days I wasn’t in pain. I’ve napped more than I’ve ever napped in my life. I struggled to keep up with basic house chores and watched an insane amount of TV. I probably should have journaled to get through my grief, but I couldn’t get myself to. I had 100 pages left on a book that I was loving, yet I couldn’t pick it up for two months.

While part of me sees this as the depression that it was, it also gave me the time to really sit in my feelings and process them in a way I don’t think I would have been capable of in the past. I initially told my therapist that I wanted to try and keep as much routine as possible. She told me it was fine if I didn’t and to give myself space to truly sit with and process what I was feeling. It’s possible I leaned into that a bit too hard, but I also think in years past I would have just kept plowing through, only for big emotions to surface at an unexpected time later.

In the past, I also would have drank a fair amount largely out of boredom and the lack of responsibilities during that time. Per the suggestion of my therapist, I didn’t drink for three weeks after the amputation and after that three-week period, I was less inclined to drink through my feelings anyway.

Getting Back Into Routine

Now it’s been two months since my finger amputation and a month since my husband’s accident. We’re both a little worse for wear but healing and in a lot better place than we were. It’s been a bit of a slow process, partially for ADHD-related reasons, to get into occupational therapy but I was able to do some desensitization work on my own to help teach my body where that finger ends now.

Without even trying, my hand has made its own adjustments while typing, so I’m not working as slowly as I expected to be. Mixed feelings about this as after I finish OT, they’ll sign off for me to get a prosthetic and I will have to re-adjust my typing again.

But if anything, this has all been a very personal lesson in how incredible the human body is. It’s been a mildly fascinating process to see how fast our bodies adjusted and healed from these injuries. After a year and a half of a war that leaves us feeling small and helpless, this has been a reminder of how strong and capable we are, both as individuals who can handle adversary and as a couple who has grown even closer after going through these things together and how close we were to having much worse outcomes.

Blog Changes Moving Forward

I debated how much of these incidents I wanted to share here because they really are so personal. Each event has been an intentionally emotional experience. Ultimately, I reminded myself that the mission of this blog is to help others feel less alone and to break down stereotypes and barriers. How can I act genuinely within that mission if I’m not being open and vulnerable about my experiences and how I’m coping with them?

I know I’m not the only person whose life and body have been altered by an Akita who acted without warning. I’m definitely not the only person to go through an amputation and the ensuing emotions. So, moving forward, you will likely see some amputation content get worked into this neurospicy blog. Beyond these updates, there are actually even more updates I’m looking forward to sharing with you and including in the content of this blog, but you’ll have to wait a little while longer to hear what those updates are.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for being on this journey with me. If you have questions about any of it, whether it be the amputation or raising an Akita, please don’t hesitate to reach out! You know I’m always here to info dump whatever knowledge I have.

With neurospicy love,

Arielle