A Palmerston man has been hospitalised after one of his family’s dogs attacked him and severed his thumb, paramedics said.

St John Ambulance NT Operations Manager Craig Garraway said paramedics responded to the incident around 4:00pm Thursday at a Bakewell residence.

“There was an amputation to his thumb,” Mr Garraway told ABC Radio Darwin.

“He did have quite nasty injuries through his hand area and obviously paramedics treated that and transported him to the hospital where he would have been undergoing a bit of surgery last night to repair the hand.”

He said the thumb was not “swallowed” by the dog.

The man’s mother told the NT News he was still awaiting surgery on Friday morning to repair lacerations to his hand and “very severed” thumb.

She said the dog had attacked the man after they had put another dog down that he had also tried to attack.