Alberta man fights off cougar, saves girlfriend’s dog

Around 3 a.m. on Monday morning, Elvis Xerri, 36, awoke to the sounds of his girlfriend’s dog yelping beneath their bedroom window.

Boomer, a 9-year-old Bernese mountain dog, was under attack.

“I was thinking it was a coyote attacking him. But it was the largest cougar I’ve ever seen, on top of the dog,” Xerri of Priddis, Alberta, told the Calgary Herald, estimating the animal to be about five feet long.

Terri, wearing only his underwear, immediately jumped to action, launching himself on the cougar, grabbing its scruff and throwing it off the dog.

The cougar wouldn’t give up so easily. It attacked the dog once more, grabbing Boomer’s head with its mouth and trying to drag the dog into the woods.

Again, Xerri hurled himself at the cougar.

“The cougar has the dog’s head in its mouth, trying to pull the dog away from me,” he told the Calgary Sun.

“I’m holding the ass-end of the dog, and the cougar has its head — we’re like face-to-face. I was screaming at it.”

“I was worried when we were face to face, thinking he was going to jump straight at me,” he admitted to CBC News.

His screams must have spooked the cat, however, as it soon abandoned the dog and ran into the woods.

Xerri’s girlfriend, Jacqui, remained indoors during the ordeal, trying to keep their 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from watching the scuffle outside.

“It scared the crap out of me. I can’t believe I did that,” Xerri said, looking back at the dangerous situation. “Would I do it again? For sure, because I wouldn’t want to be a bystander. Was it smart? Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

Both Boomer and Xerri escaped the incident with only minor injuries.

“He’s alive,” Xerri said of Boomer. “I was worried about Jacqui. She’s not used to the country, and if she lost her dog that way, it would be really traumatic.”

Concerned that the next cougar attack might be against his children, Xerri plans to report the attack to provincial Fish and Wildlife in the hopes they can track down the animal and relocate it.