A woman in Vermont has survived being mauled by a bear in her backyard after her Shih Tzu chased its cub up a tree and it attacked her before her boyfriend chased it off using a flashlight.
Sarah Dietl, 43, of the town of Winhall in Vermont’s Bennington County, in the US, said the ordeal “was terrifying” and she ended up in hospital with a “mangled hand” and 15 stitches to her scalp.
Dietl had reportedly been letting her dog, called ‘Bodhi’, out in the backyard to do its business when it chased the bear cub up a tree, angering its mother, who charged Dietl and attacked her to protect her offspring.
Dietl said: “She came running out of the dark. She ran right to me.”
She added: “It was terrifying.”
She said: “I think I tried to fight, but I just ended up in a fetal position trying to protect my head,”
The dog quickly scarpered back into the couple’s home, a condo, before Robert Montuoro, Dietl’s boyfriend, hit the bear in the head with a heavy-duty flashlight.
The bear then briefly let go and the couple quickly made a run for it back into the home.
Montuoro said: “Once I pulled Sarah into the house, the bear charged the door.”
The couple called the police, with Montuoro saying: “I was [expletive] terrified.”
Her injuries, sustained in the incident which took place on Wednesday, 2nd November, at around 10pm, were luckily not considered to be life-threatening, according to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
Game warden Kyle Isherwood said: “Before letting pets out at night, I would urge Vermonters to light their yards and make plenty of noise to allow wildlife in the area time to move on.”
And Justin Stedman, warden director for the Vermont Fish And Wildlife Department, said that bear encounters in Vermont this year were at “the highest level than we’ve ever had.”
He said this was down to an increase in bear and human populations and a lack of food for bears because of a lack of rain.
Dry conditions and warmer weather have caused bears to seek food in areas where people live, according to local media.
