A 55-year-old Florida woman has revealed how she survived a horror dog attack that left her arms and legs mauled by playing dead in a trench for hours.
Stephanie Walker, a former food truck owner and mother of three, was returning to her 100-acre farm in Hamilton County at midnight in September 2022 when the nightmare unfolded.
It was pitch dark, and after checking on her dogs in the feeding area, she noticed that a rescue pit bull mix named Buddy, whose friend she was temporarily caring for, had not gone to the bathroom.
She grabbed a flashlight and a leash so she could walk him – but when she stepped out of the shed, the 70-pound dog with a “big” neck and head started growling.
Seconds later he attacked. He grabbed her right arm and tore it apart. He then sank his teeth into her thigh and ripped out a large chunk before attacking her arms again, and that’s when she heard the bone break.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Walker said: ‘I shouted: “Buddy stop! Why are you doing this?” I had a conversation with a dog that tried to kill me
‘I knew at that moment it was ‘do or die’. No one came to save me.’
Stephanie Walker, 55, grew up with dogs and said she always had at least four at a time
Buddy, a pit bull mix, from Miami-Dade Animal Control, was a rescue worker who had lived with her for three weeks before the near-fatal attack
She spent six weeks in the burn unit at the University of Gainesville Hospital in Florida
Walker desperately tried to fight back and strangle the dog with the leash left in her left hand, but she didn’t have the strength.
“I was screaming and begging him to stop,” she recalled.
Alone, unarmed and terrified, in that moment she felt her mentality change and freeze. She lay as still as possible while the dog grabbed her left shoulder.
She managed to drag herself to a nearby gully that stretched across her property – about 3 feet deep and 18 inches wide.
She said: ‘I remember thinking that fighting this dog isn’t working for me – I’m going to play dead.’
She curled up in the fetal position to protect her torso and sat in the mud, dirt and gravel as heavy rain poured down on her.
“I had my long hair tied up in a bun and I remember being terrified he was going to scalp me,” she said.
‘He started sniffing my right ear twice. “I didn’t budge and then he disappeared,” she said.
With no idea how much time had passed, Walker finally crawled out of the ditch and began limping toward the road.
Her flashlight was gone and the only light came from the headlights of a passing car.
Moments later she thought she saw a deer jumping across the road, but to her horror she realized it was Buddy – he was back.
‘I literally almost died. All I could think about was that I have no idea how to get away from this dog now. “I’m outside and I’m literally standing in the middle of the road,” she said.
The car had passed by without stopping and Buddy was getting closer to her.
She froze, pulling her arms close to her body and fighting the urge to run.
“He came up to me, sniffed both my arms and then ran off into the woods with another dog,” she said.
At that moment, Walker walked as quickly as she could to the barn.
“My right arm was completely disabled and I had three working fingers on my left arm but could turn the handle,” she said.
Once inside, she remembers feeling overwhelmed by thirst and so weak that she didn’t even have the strength to locate her cell phone.
‘I sat down on the bed. I cried. I screamed. I prayed and fainted,” she recalled.
It wasn’t until five in the morning, when her alarm went off, that she was able to find the phone under the bed.
Finally, after five hours of hell, the paramedics, police and her son arrived to help.
She said as soon as she got into the ambulance, the dog ran down the road to the barn looking for her.
She told the sheriff that the dog was a threat and that she should “shoot” it. That shot was the last thing she heard before falling into a deep, medicinal sleep.
“Then it was over,” she recalled.
Stephanie Walker said she no longer rescues dogs and takes their lives one day at a time
Walker’s right arm was torn apart and had to be reconstructed after the attack
The dog ripped large chunks out of Walker’s leg during the vicious attack
Walker was transported to a local hospital about 20 miles away.
Doctors were concerned about how much blood she had lost and rushed her to the University of Florida Gainesville Hospital.
Walker spent the next six weeks in the hospital’s burn unit. She had severe infections from the dog bites after lying in the mud and mud in the ditch.
Her broken right arm had to be completely reconstructed and pieces of skin were missing on her left arm. Her right thigh was also badly damaged.
“The driving thought that kept me alive was that I didn’t want my 19-year-old daughter to find me dead on the farm,” she said.
Walker explained that she only cared for Buddy for a few weeks before he went to live with a woman in New Hampshire.
She said she was never informed by the Miami-Dade County shelter that the dog was dangerous, but the driver who transported him to her home said he was aggressive. At her house he growled a little, but he seemed calmer.
“I thought I was safe because I was in my own home,” she said. “I had an exit strategy, but once I got to the farm in that open space, there was no exit strategy anymore. I had no weapon. I didn’t have a gun with me, that never occurred to me.’
The barn on Walker’s 40-acre farm in Hamilton County, and where Buddy and the other dogs were housed
The feeding room (pictured) where Walker hid after the attack before help arrived
The hiker’s right arm is sewn up, but still with visible scars, bruises and bleeding
Walker’s arm is showing some signs of improvement
It’s been more than two years since the horrific ordeal, and while most of Walker’s wounds have healed, she has limitations due to the injuries she sustained.
‘I have very little dexterity in my right hand. I can not cook. I can’t hold a knife. I can’t pick up a pen. I can’t type – it’s such strange things – you think I just can’t do it.’
Unable to do the heavy lifting, Walker sold the farm and moved to Georgia.
Now she’s fighting for legislation to help protect others from dangerous dogs and testified in Tallahassee for the Pam Rock Dangerous Dog Bill, named after a postal worker killed by two stray dogs in 2022.
The bill did not pass, but she hopes it will gain momentum in the future.
For now, she is taking life day by day. And incredibly, even though she no longer rescues dogs, she still has six pups of her own who live in her home.