How would I make it so an animation will play, but stop when it hits a collider?

Basically I need it for a tree chopping system I have. when I click a button I want my axe to play the chopping animation, but when it collides with the tree(or any object for that matter) It basically chops into it and stops like it would with a real tree, instead of going straight through the tree and looking like a poor animation. Anyone have any help as to how to set up this script on the axe (In C#)?