A woman was left relying on life support to stay alive after her "excited" dog got the "zoomies" and accidentally headbutted her.
Erin Stevenson had been watching her beloved Staffordshire Bull Terrier play in the garden.
The dog, Skyy, had the "zoomies" and was running around excitedly when she made a sudden beeline towards Erin and hurtled right towards her, accidentally headbutting her on the chin.
Erin, 41 from Chicago, Illionois, US, felt more or less fine she thought, her neck began aching the next day but she assumed she had a sore throat so was going to visit her doctor.
However, three days after the collision, Erin, a speech therapist, woke at 3am with a swollen neck and was completely unable to swallow.
Alarmed, she went to the hospital where she just thought she'd be given antibiotics and sent on her way.
But instead a CT scan revealed two of Erin's molars had been accidentally cracked by her happy-go-lucky dog and she'd developed an infection.
It was this that had triggered the extreme swelling and left doctors worried her airways might close up entirely.
Things were so bad that medics took the decision to put Erin onto life support, relying on a breathing tube for a week as they drained the infection from her neck.
Before she went under Erin texted her husband Scott, 46, and told him what was happening and that she loved him, and her family
All the time, five-year-old Skyy was at home, unaware of the trouble she had caused.
Erin said: "Skyy's done plenty in her day but nothing quite like this. She's trouble and she keeps us all on our toes. She loves being around people.
"She just doesn't know how to control her excitement. She runs and jumps and gets herself into all sorts of trouble. I wouldn't change her.
"She was running around doing zoomies back and forth in the yard. She came towards me and I didn't think anything of it so I leant forward and she jumped and headbutted me straight under the jaw.
"It hurt but I didn't think much of it, I just thought it was from the impact. Two days later, my throat started to hurt. I thought it was strep throat. I was planning on going to see a doctor but I woke up at around 3am and I couldn't swallow.
"I woke my husband and said I was going to the emergency room to get antibiotics for strep throat.
"There was significant swelling on one side of my face. I had a CT scan, antibiotics and steroids. They didn't know what it was. They thought maybe it was a haematoma or a broken jaw.
"They were worried that if the swelling didn't go down then my airways would close. I was put to sleep and a tube inserted to breathe for me."
Erin text Scott to tell him she loved him before she was whisked off to intensive care.
Erin said: "I text my husband saying he might want to go down to the hospital and I might not be awake when he got there. I told him to tell my family I love them. It was worse for him than for me.
"I was incubated and put on life support. Unbeknown to me, Skyy had cracked two of my molars and I'd developed an abscess which had caused the swelling.
"Doctors removed two of my teeth and put a drain in my neck to drain out the infection. They left me on life support to make sure there were no secondary infections but I did develop a second one which was drained and finally resolved the problem.
"Skyy had no idea the trouble she'd caused but my husband did say she knew something was going on.
But even after Erin was woken up off life support and her life resumed once more she said her "nightmare" is far from over.
Following the severe infection, four months on she still can't fully open her mouth.
"The one lingering injury I have is that now I can only open my mouth to a certain point which is a bit of a nightmare," she said.
Erin says this isn't the first time her pets have caused trouble as Skyy once bit through the wall and ended up spending the day with the neighbours until she got home from work.
Erin said: "I once got call from the neighbour saying don't worry but they had Skyy which really confused me because when I left her, she was in a crate.
"When I got home, they said she'd escaped the crate and bitten through the wall. They are saints, my husband said he was surprised they didn't kill her.
"People said if they didn't know me then they wouldn't believe this had happened."
