A hero dog who saved its owner from a mountain lion attack when hiking has died after suffering a fractured skull in the attack.
Gatekeepers News reports that Fierce Belgian shepherd, Eva, who suffered serious injuries helping stave off the attack, died after suffering several seizures this morning according to posts on her owner’s Instagram.
The post read: “We said goodbye at 9:20 this morning.
“There were no changes to her condition overnight. Goodbye my beautiful sweet girl.
“You are my world, my light, my best friend. The world is a much darker place.”
Erin Wilson, 24, was hiking with her pet on the Big Bar Pass on May 16 in the rural Trinity River area of Northern California when the wild cat attacked her.
She said that Eva was off-leash a few yards ahead of her when she had just started the hike. Her pickup truck was still in sight on Highway 299 when she was confronted by the growling predator, Wilson told the Sacramento Bee.
It lunged at Wilson, swiping at her left shoulder and scratching her through her jacket.
“I will never be able to live up to how amazing and loyal she is to me,’ Wilson said at the time.
“I yelled ‘Eva!’ and she came running,’ the 24-year-old hiker said. ‘And she hit the cat really hard.”
Wilson said that the mountain lion appeared to be emaciated, but still out-classed the 55-pound Belgian Malinois, who is 2 and half years old.
“They fought for a couple seconds, and then I heard her start crying,” Wilson said.
According to her, the cougar sunk its fangs into Eva’s head and held on even as she beat it with her fists, rocks, sticks and whatever else she could find.
She said the mountain lion fended her off with its back paws.
“They battled for a few moments until I heard her cry,” Wilson said on the crowdfunding site GoFundMe. “The cat had her by the left side of her head. For the next several minutes I tried everything I could to free her.”
Wilson said she ran to her car to fetch a tire iron to beat the creature with and flagged down a driver, Sharon Houston.
Houston, a self-described ‘overprepared’ camp counsellor said Wilson was ‘pretty scrapped up.’
Wilson told her that “a mountain lion had just attacked her dog and she wanted to know if I had a weapon–which I didn’t other than my little pepper spray,” Houston told the blog Redheaded Blackbelt.
She said that the frantic dog owner was ‘mad and terrified at the same time’ and holding an extendable baton.
“She was very determined to stop this mountain lion from attacking her dog so I couldn’t leave her,” the passerby said.
Houston said after more beating on the creature, it let go of the dog and turned its attention back to both women.
The cougar ‘swiped at us and bared its teeth’ Houston told the blog.
“I opened up my pepper spray and just hosed its face,’ Houston told the blog. ‘It was the longest 5 to 10 seconds…I begged, ‘Please work, please work, please work.”
After blast of chemical mace, it ran off.
“I think it’s safe to assume that dog probably saved her life,” Capt. Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife told The Sacramento Bee.
It was a frantic trip to the vet’s clinic about an hour away, Eva began having convulsing spells halfway through the drive.
“I didn’t think she’d make it every time it started up,” Wilson said.
The Malinois suffered two skull fractures, a punctured skull cavity and severe swelling around the left eye, which blocks her vision.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating the attack, collecting DNA samples from the dog’s wounds and will try to catch the cougar, officials said.
Attacks on humans by mountain lions are rare – there have been 20 such incidents in California since 1986, three fatal. Authorities said that if they do catch the animal, it will be put down.
“My dog is my hero and I owe her my life,” she said.
