DELAND, Fla. - On Friday, the woman who had to use a gun to kill her own dog while fending off an attack, spoke exclusively to FOX 35. Melanie Young of Deltona said the dog's behavior was completely unexpected. “I didn’t believe he would ever hurt me.. ever.”

Her son's pit bull mix, a dog in her care for nearly two years, turned on her. “That dog slept with me like a husband. He went to car rides with me to the grocery store. We walked every single night.”

Young is now out of the hospital after recovering for almost a full week from severe injuries. ”I could just feel my flesh coming out of my arm. I thought I was going to die. I get flash-backs constantly.”

Young said the vicious mauling started when the animal suddenly attacked her other dog, Koda. “It got so out of hand, so gruesome," she said, so she grabbed a shot gun and killed the dog. "I pulled the shot gun out and shot him. He took his front legs and dragged himself out of my room and collapsed and I shot him again and shot him again.”

Young said the two dogs always got along just fine, but now realizes there might have been some recent warning signs that something might not have been right with the pit bull. “For the past month, he’s been acting off… I was at the kitchen sink and I went want are you doing, what are you doing and he went.. this was the first time he lifted his teeth and went grrrr;”

Her message to pit bull owners: “ They do, they turn I don’t care how nice you are one day. It could have been my face or I could be dead.”