Mountain lion attacks woman in Northern California. Dog badly hurt trying to defend her

A woman’s dog was badly wounded Monday while fighting off a mountain lion that attacked its owner, California wildlife officials say.

“I think it’s safe to assume that dog probably saved her life,” Capt. Patrick Foy of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, said in an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Sacramento Bee.

The attack happened in a remote area of Northern California just after 3 p.m. along Highway 299 in the Big Bar area in Trinity County, a four hour-drive northwest of Sacramento.

The woman, who was later identified as Erin Wilson, pulled off the side of the highway to go for a walk along the Trinity River with her Belgian Malinois.

Wilson, in an interview with The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday afternoon, credited her dog with saving her life.

The mountain lion pounced on Wilson from behind, digging its claws into her left shoulder, Foy said. The dog was out a few feet in front of his owner on the trail.

Wilson screamed, the dog heard it and it turned around and started fighting the cougar, Foy said.

“The dog and the lion were in a pretty vicious fight,” he said.

The mountain lion bit into the dog’s head and wouldn’t let go.

“So the woman attempted to throw rocks. She tugged at it. She pulled. She even attempted to gouge the eyes out,” Foy said. “She couldn’t drive it off the dog.”

Foy said Wilson had no choice but to run back to the highway and get help as the cougar began dragging off the trail the 50- to 55-pound dog by its head.

Motorists stops to help

Sharon Houston, who lives in the area, said she was driving by when she saw Wilson frantically trying to flag her down. Houston’s involvement was first reported by Redheaded Blackbelt, a North Coast media outlet run by local journalist Kym Kemp.

Wilson was holding what appeared to be some sort of baton, said Houston, 33.

Once she explained what was happening, Houston grabbed a four-foot length of PVC pipe and a small can of pepper spray she carries and ran down to help. Houston said the pair began beating on the lion.

“We’re just yelling and hitting it,” Houston told The Bee on Tuesday. “I’m just hoping it’s going to let go because it didn’t feel like it was doing much of anything, hitting it in the skull.”

Houston said that eventually, the lion released the dog for a moment.

“And that’s when I opened up the pepper spray and just started soaking it in the face until it started backing up,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Please work. Please work. Please work.’ ”

She said that before it ran off, the cougar appeared to be sickly.

“It looked pretty thin,” Houston said. “You could see its ribs. Its eyes were looking kind of hazy, like not clear — kind of like a dog’s cataract eyes.”

After Wilson, still bleeding from her own wounds, hopped back in her car to try save the dog that saved her.

“She took it right to the vet, and they started working on it immediately to try to save the dog’s life,” Foy said. “And the dog is not out of the woods yet.”

The woman’s injuries were not life-threatening, but she might need to be treated for rabies as a precaution, Foy said.

Mountain lion attacks are rare

Meanwhile, investigators collected DNA samples off her and the dog that are being analyzed Tuesday at a Sacramento-area lab. Wildlife officials are going to try to capture the mountain lion in a trap. The DNA will be used to confirm if it’s the same cougar.

Typically, state officials will kill cougars after documented attacks on people.

In 1990, California voters banned mountain lion hunting, but the ballot initiative allows wildlife officers to kill lions deemed a “public safety” threat.

Since 1986, mountain lions have killed three people in California, and attacked around 17 others non-fatally, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Such attacks on people are exceedingly rare, considering thousands of mountain lions share habitat with California’s 39 million people. Studies have repeatedly shown that cougars live across the state and that humans usually have no idea their giant feline neighbors are around, typically prowling at night. Their preferred prey is deer, though they’ll eat everything from skunks to domestic dogs and cats.

Sprawling 3,208-square-mile Trinity County, population 12,541, is prime mountain lion habitat. Houston said she can attest to the rarity of seeing one in person.

“This is literally the second live mountain line I’ve seen in my whole life,” she said.

This story was originally published May 17, 2022 at 1:11 PM with the headline "Mountain lion attacks woman in Northern California. Dog badly hurt trying to defend her."