Moose attacks Iditarod rookie’s sled team, injures 4 dogs
Posted February 8, 2022 4:16 pm.
Last Updated February 8, 2022 4:33 pm.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week — and the attack didn’t end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.
She said on Facebook last Friday that the moose, after seriously injuring four of her dogs, wouldn’t leave and that the ordeal stopped only after she called friends for help and one showed up with a larger caliber gun and killed the moose.
“This has been the most horrific past 24 hours of my life,” she posted after the moose attack Thursday on the Salcha River trail system near Fairbanks.
Watkins wrote that the attack first reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner happened while she was on a 52-mile (83.7-kilometer) training run for the nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts March 5 in Anchorage.
Her four injured dogs were taken to a veterinarian in the nearby community of North Pole and are recovering, Watkins posted.
Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press
