When Luis Brignoni, a 41-year-old Florida Man, heard screams from his backyard, he went outside to discover a terrible scene: his 11-year-old son, Fernando, screaming and bloody-handed as his older son, 13-year-old Luis Jr, stood nearby, beating the family dog over the head with a stick. The dog, a Malamute-wolf mix named Sassy, had just bitten off Fernando's finger and was holding it in its mouth. Brignoni approached the dog to retrieve the severed digit but by that time it was too late – Sassy had swallowed the little finger.

Brignoni made a quick decision.

"I said, 'I've got to go find the finger,'" Brignoni said. "I got my gun and I popped him."

By the time Manatee County sheriff's deputies arrive, Brignoni was already cutting his dead dog's stomach open to recover the finger. A deputy assisted Brignoni in locating the finger and helped him pack it on ice. Alas, there was nothing that could be done to save it; surgeons Tampa General Hospital determined the finger was too mangled to reattach.

Brignoni took his son's loss well. "He might be missing a finger but his other four are good. Everything he could do with five fingers he can do with four," he told Bay New 9.

He was more upset about killing his dog, telling the station it was "basically losing a family member...it was just really tough." Not that he had any regrets. "You don't know what you will do for your child," Brignoni told the Bradenton Herald. "You don't know where you get the strength from."

[Guardian/Image via Bay News 9]