Tuesday, at 1:30 in the morning, my dad hears this unbelievable dog scream. Yes, dogs can scream. He looked out the window and thought our eight year old border collie Minnie, had our 15 year old little lab Blacky… he went down stairs and outside and up the basement steps and realized that was not at all the case. A cougar had Minnie!
So he races back inside and up the stairs screaming for my mom to wake up (she sleeps with ear plugs) and that he needs his gun. So he gets his gun and by this time my mom is in the kitchen and hears something outside the kitchen door, opens that up and starts screaming hysterically because a SECOND COUGAR has our one year old puppy, Curly!
Long story short (and it is a very long story, I don’t know how my parents did this), but mom through something at the cougar that had Curly, so that cougar kinda took off but my Dad was able to shoot it.
He then runs back inside the house, down the stairs and out the basement door and was able to shoot the second cougar who had Minnie.
They called the dogs, who both raced inside the house. (Throughout this all Blacky, who is stone deaf, slept in her dog house and had no clue this was going on… which is good because she is little and if the cougars had gotten her, she would not be with us today).
The cougar saga continued, but, in the end they were both dead and the conservation officers have come and taken them away to examine them. From what my parents can tell, they are both female, most likely sisters, and probably under one year of age… they were between 70-100 pounds, so not that big, but too big for our 40 pound dogs to deal with. THey were fairly healthy and not super skinny, but probably not experienced hunters. We have also had more snow this year than I can remember for a long while and all of the deer seemed to have disappeared. It is uncommon for them to travel in pairs, but because we think they are so young, they were still together.
So this all happens at 130 in the morning. By 330 they are on the road to the vet (90 mins away) and Minnie is having a bunch of seizures. Curly is almost bleeding to death and her eyes are swollen shut. Both cougars attacked their heads. Not their necks, their faces. Apparently at one time the cougar had Minnie’s entire face in it’s mouth and it was clamped down.
Minnie has two skull fractures and about twenty bite marks on her face and head. Her chest, shoulder, side and left front leg are also covered in bites, so she was in a scrap before attacked it seems.
I should mention this all happened within TEN feet of the house. Minnie sleeps behind my moms car every night….. so my Dad thinks she was attacked first and then Curly came out of the dog house to see what was up and was chased and attacked by the second cougar.
Curly has a bone sticking out of her forhead and a couple more holes in her face, and one hole in her side. Because she almost bled to death, she had only 20% red blood cells left and they had to put her on heavy duty meds to create new red blood cells.
Minnie is to have surgery this morning to remove the bone chip at the back of her head and clean up the other fracture and then sew up the rest of the major holes on her face. She also has some neurological damage possibly as her left side is a bit slower than normal… but the vets are optomistic that this could be just from the major concussion she received from having her head shook around throughout all of this ordeal. THe only problem is is that she almost died while being spayed six years ago… so please keep her in your thoughts. She does not agree well with full anethesia.
Curly will have surgery tomorrow once her vitals are normal again. But she was super happy last night and cuddly when I visited her, so I think she will be fine.
Please keep both of my doggies in your thoughts for the next few days. After the surgery they can go home, but it will be a long road of antibiotics and pain killers for them both.
Sorry, I do not have pictures to post. If they make it through the surgeries, I will take some pictures, but if not, I do not want to remember them in pain..
Thank you for reading this,
Robyn