It was November 2020 and pro skater Brooklinn Khoury, a rising model and influencer from California, was visiting her cousins in Arizona.
After popping into a local grocery store, Khoury returned to her cousin's place to have lunch. A few minutes later, her life changed forever.
While she was standing in the kitchen, the 23-year-old remembers reaching out to pat her cousin's dog - an eight-year-old pit bull she'd known since it was a puppy.
"I was like, 'You're such a good boy', she shared in an interview with PEOPLE. "He literally sprung from a sitting position onto my face."
"I was standing, and he was sitting... he was literally, hanging — literally like arms, legs hanging off of my lip. And my first instinct was like, 'Oh my God, get on the ground with him, hold his head, go wherever he goes.'"
Grabbing the dog's head and attempting to push it back, she said, "Finally, I felt a release. And then, something flew and hit the wall."
Standing up, Khoury took a deep breath, sharing with Newsweek, "it felt like somebody had shoved dry ice up my nose".
"Because of the adrenalin, I didn't feel pain at all... When my cousin finally turned around to face me, she was in shock."
"I remember standing over the bathroom sink, watching blood leaking from my mouth. It was when I put my hands on the sink, and finally looked up at myself in the mirror, that I began to really process what had happened to me. I was in disbelief."
