Best way to fix animation errors after rotating an animated object?

I am very new to Unity. While experimenting with Unity today, I imported a machete that I had modeled and animated previously. After fixing it to my character controller, I came to the realization that a machete tilted down looks much better than a vertical machete. Unfortunately, rotating my machete also rotated my animation, so instead of a horizontal slash, my character chopped towards the ground. I have been thinking of ways to fix it, but everything I have tried so far has failed to work. I thought of making an animation that brings the machete up to its vertical position right before doing the slash animation, but I am not sure how I would do that. The only other solution I can think of is to re-animate my machete, but I really don't want to have to do that. Any ideas or suggestions?