Washington woman attacked by bear says her dogs provoked the incident and then came to her aid

It was late morning and the heat was increasing outside Kettle Falls, Washington, when Lynn O'Connor came face to face with a bear.

She had been walking her dogs on her property in a rural northeast corner of Washington state near the Idaho panhandle and the Canadian border, about 70 miles north of Spokane.

O'Connor has two dogs, and a neighbor's dog regularly accompanies her on her daily walks through the fields bordering the Colville National Forest.

“They started chasing something in the field and I thought it was cows because that's what they do, they chase cows,” she said. “It turned out it wasn't a cow. It was a bear.”

The bear came around a bush about two meters behind O'Connor and ran toward her.

“Suddenly we were standing across the path from each other,” O'Connor said. “She started snorting and pawing and clawing.”

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O'Connor, a retired ranger, tried to remember everything you should do if you encounter a bear. She tried to make herself bigger. She yelled at the bear. She slowly started to back away, but the bear kept getting closer.

She remembered hearing on a CBC broadcast that someone had managed to fend off a grizzly bear by punching it in the nose.

“So I thought, okay, I’ll give it a try,” she said.

She hit the bear on the nose, but it still didn't stop and approached her.

O'Connor said it was clear to her at that point that an attack was imminent.

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She dropped to the path and curled up into a ball.

“She was on top of me and I think what happened next was a punch, punch, punch, and then my dogs were on top of her and chased her away,” she said. “And it was all over.”

She said the entire encounter probably lasted no more than 10 to 15 seconds.

O'Connor stood up and looked across the field.

“I saw her cub chasing the whole group of dogs and bears, and then I realized what she was doing,” she said.

Officials from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived at the scene, and O'Connor was flown by helicopter to Spokane, where her injuries were treated. As a retired ranger familiar with bear attack policies, O'Connor knew what state officials would do next.

“I told them, 'Don't kill her. Please don't kill her,'” she recalls. “She was just trying to do what mother bears do.”

State officials searched for the bear with sniffer dogs throughout the afternoon, but temperatures rose to nearly 100 degrees. When one of the dogs collapsed from the heat, the search was called off.

Although the search was called off, state officials did indeed shoot a bear on O'Connor's property the next day. O'Connor said it was not the same bear that attacked her.

O'Connor blames herself for not being louder and for being too relaxed about being in the wilderness she knows so well.

“That's why I talk about wildlife safety,” she said. “Because I put them in danger, another bear was shot.”

O'Connor said she only went for her first walk since the attack on Wednesday. She said her family members were more willing to walk with her after the attack.

She now has her dogs wear bells so they can scare the bears away before they get too close.

“I don't mind seeing bears because they usually run away,” O'Connor said. “But for the rest of the season, I'm OK with not seeing any more.”