Attack!

Cooper, the dog belonging to our landlady, used to be able to roam freely around Hope but on the day we arrived in town, he was discovered after 5 days of being "locked onto" a female dog. The ensuing emergency visit to the vet (driven by the lady who was formerly looking after him), stitches and lampshade-like dog collar made us wary of letting him roam while WE were his caretakers.

While we were looking after him and we weren't walking, jogging or hiking with this exceptionally social dog, we had to keep him on a leash outside to keep him from being too bored and lonely. Yesterday morning, he was on the leash and started barking like crazy. There had been a cow moose and her calf visiting the house the past two evenings and we knew that Cooper would bark like that when she was around.

I was in the main house and came down the porch stairs to see what was going on only to nearly walk right into the moose which was standing just around the corner. Cooper lunged at the calf, which started to walk down the driveway, but the mother moose (an ENORMOUS creature) did what threatened cow moose do - she reared up on her hind legs and tried to stomp on the dog. Meanwhile, I tried to pull Cooper back by his leash. Luckily, the leash kept Cooper from actually touching the moose and yanked him away from the rapidly descending hoof.

I was able to drag the snarling dog back into the house and the moose didn't seem interested in pursuing me so she nonchalantly loped down the driveway to join her calf.

Needless to say...I didn't really need any coffee to get me going for the rest of the morning.