A small dog is recovering after being attacked by an owl in a Sherwood Park backyard Tuesday night.
Bailey, a 15-year-old Shih Tzu, was in her backyard when a great horned owl swooped in and attacked her.
“I came out to check and I came around the corner, and I saw her laying in the snow and I couldn’t quite figure out what I was seeing because there was a big dark shape over her,” Anita Labrentz told CTV news. “She was just laying there with her eyes open and her tongue hanging out, so I really thought she was gone. I thought I was too late.”
The owl gave Bailey six wounds in total.
“Really hadn’t thought that our backyard had anything to be concerned about,” Labrentz said.
There was another owl sighting in Sherwood Park that day. About nine hours earlier, Jessica Cook was in her kitchen when she looked out and saw an owl on her deck railing.
“It was just too much of a coincidence to feel like it wasn’t the same bird for sure,” Cook said.
A Strathcona County environmental team’s spokesperson told CTV News owls are common in the area, but these attacks are not.
With files from Dan Grummett
