WEST KELOWNA – He’s badly wounded but a West Kelowna dog is lucky to be alive after surviving a cougar attack over the weekend. Ozzie was missing for more than a day. When his owner, Tyler Hilditch found him, he was in bad shape. Now Hilditch is warning others about the cougar that he spotted near a local trail.
“Big bruising and it goes down into his jawline,” explains Hilditch, referring to Ozzie’s injuries.
The dog has a long road of recovery ahead of him after being attacked. He was out with Hilditch hiking the McDougal Rim Trail when the dog ran ahead. Ozzie didn’t return home which had Hilditch in a frantic hunt for his missing dog.
“By this point I looked over a cliff, it was kind of my worst nightmare, calling his name again and I saw something move and it was a cougar,” says Hilditch.
Hilditch put up posters and spread the word about his lost dog. However, he didn’t find Ozzie for 28 hours. It was another family of hikers that discovered him lying near a creek and badly wounded. Ozzie was bleeding from one ear, his jaw was badly infected and he was covered with puncture wounds. Hilditch says the dehydrated dog could hardly walk.
“He had surgery for three hours,” says Hilditch. “The doctor spent the whole night with him afraid he wasn’t going to make it through the night.”
Ozzie did make it through the night. He came home on Sunday, but Hilditch says he is full of tubes to drain his many wounds.
“For a dog his size to put up a fight; and I think he won if we found him and he’s walking away. I think he won,” says Hilditch.
Hilditch is still worried about Ozzie. He says this experience has changed him.
“I don’t think I’ll let him off leash up there again. It’s definitely not worth it,” he says.
Now he just wants to get the word out to other hikers and people who live in the Rose Valley area. There is a cougar out there and it has come very close to recreational trails.
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