WATCH: Moose charges Red Deer woman walking dogs
Posted May 6, 2022 12:30 pm.
A video posted Tuesday of a Red Deer woman walking her three dogs in an off-leash dog park being charged by a moose has gone viral.
Tara Gilkie says it happened earlier this week at the Three Mile Bend recreation area.
According to Gilkie, she was about five minutes into their walk and rounding a corner when she noticed her biggest dog Murphy staring into the trees.
“Next thing I know this moose just shoots out of the bushes at him and he runs away from it, and then the moose runs back into the woods, and that’s when I had hit record on my phone,” she told CityNews.
Gilkie says the moose came out of the woods a second time with two smaller moose, charging at one of her other dogs, named Tucker, which is only about 30lbs.
“I just watched her feet prance around my dog, like I didn’t even really look up at her I was just watching her feet and Tucker kind of like go back and forth between her feet. I was like ‘he’s 30 pounds he’s going to get stomped on and I am going to have to watch it and there’s nothing I can do she’s just prancing over top of him.'”
Thankfully Gilkie and her dogs managed to escape the situation without injuries.
“My heart was beating so fast, I was shaking, I called my girlfriend and I was crying after,” she said, noting that while it was only about 10 seconds it felt like 10 minutes.
She posted the video to TikTok, at the time of publishing it had amassed nearly 5 million views and more than 400,000 likes.
Many people in the comment section took aim at Gilkie for not having her dogs on leashes, but she was in an area where dogs are permitted to be off-leash.
Gilkie eventually had to turn the comments off on her video due to the amount of negative comments she received.
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Ken Lehman, ecological services operations coordinator with the City of Red Deer Parks department, says moose make frequent appearances in the area.
He’s reminding people to be vigilant, because even though the Three Mile Bend area is an off-leash area, it is also a natural habitat along the river.
“Be aware of what time of year it is. Be aware of what could happen. Perhaps you keep your dog on leash at that time if you deem the risk high enough. In the spring right now we’re dealing with calves, babies, fawns, there’s kits or beaver pups sometimes people call them, but certainly there’s territorial and protective behavior that will be displayed with each of those wildlife species as they clash with dogs.”
He says the City of Red Deer Parks department have public service announcements and signage in the area to remind people of the risks.
And if running into a moose during a walk isn’t Canadian enough, Lehman says they’ve also seen some dog and beaver clashes in the area.
