Dog 'saves woman's life' by eating her face Good dog? A GRANDMOTHER whose face was chewed off by her own dog has credited the beast with saving her life. Wendy Hamriding, 53, knocked herself unconscious when she fell down the stairs, The Daily Mail reports. Mrs Hamriding's dog Cassie, a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross, tried to rouse her without success. As her efforts became more frantic, Cassie started nibbling at her owner's bloodied face. When Mrs Hamriding woke in extreme pain two hours later, Cassie had eaten her right eye and the bone around the socket. Mrs Hamriding was taken to hospital, where she stayed for three months while plastic surgeons reconstructed her face using flesh from her stomach and leg. The dog was put down. At the time, Mrs Hamriding could still see with her left eye, but she lost all sight during the plastic surgery and skin grafts that followed, the Mail reports. Now, two years later, her sight has been partially restored by a procedure called osteo-odonto-keratoprothesis. One of Mrs Hamriding's canine teeth was removed and shaped so an "optical cylinder" could be implanted in it. That cylinder was then implanted into her left eye. "When they first told me that my tooth was going to be put into my eye to make me see, it sounded like something from a film," Mrs Hamriding says. All of that might sound like an unnecessary ordeal to you. We'd certainly rather keep our faces, given the choice. But Mrs Hamriding says Cassie actually saved her life, because by eating her face the dog put an end to her alcoholism. "Cassie saved my life and I would rather be blind for life than dead," she says. Before this happened, I was weeks away from dying as a result of drink. I am so lucky to have had my life saved when I was so close to dying as a result of alcohol, and I am even luckier to have got my sight back. Mrs Hamriding has now devoted her life to helping alcoholics, along with heroin and cocaine addicts, the Mail reports. "I lost my eye and I lost my dog, but it was the best thing that could have happened," she says.