WITH her face butchered by a machete, the future looked bleak for Poppy the stray pup.
But Bondi vet Dr Chris Brown has come to the dog's rescue, flying the canine from Fiji to Sydney for life-saving reconstructure surgery.
Poppy suffered horrendous injuries after she was accidentally struck by a man in a feral pig hunt.
Dr Brown said: "It looked like she would be put down, but luckily someone found her and helped her. Her injuries are very confronting and very serious, but she is a lovely little dog with a good heart and we really want to help her."
Poppy has been in quarantine at Eastern Creek, where Dr Brown says she has to remain for three weeks before she is transferred to the Small Animal Specialist Hospital in North Ryde.
Severely mutilated with the front section of her snout missing from below her eyes as well as her ears missing, she was brought into the Nadi Animals Clinic & Shelter in March after being seen scavenging for food by the headmaster of the Kavanagasau Secondary College, in Sigatoka.
Dr Brown said: "We are planning to do reconstructive surgery on her ... She must be in a lot of pain all the time."
The vet will assist in the operation with Dr Andrew Marchevsky, and the process to rebuild her nose will take a few hours.
"It's going to be a very delicate process, but hopefully it will help give her a much better quality of life and limit the infections that she could get because of her injury."
Lynn Scott from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Nadi said: "It is a miracle that this little dog is alive.
"It was a terrible thing ... the man never made any effort to get help for her, and he left her to starve."
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