Dog Owner Slaps Cougar With Slipper Big Cat Had Been On The Prowl For Pets, Attacked Several Animals West Of Republic

Randy and Suzie Sage knew their dog Charkee was in trouble when they heard the 40-pound pooch screaming about 3 a.m. on the front porch of their rural home 3 1/2 miles west of town.

“It wasn’t a real bark,” Randy Sage recalled. “It was kind of a scream for help.”

He didn’t know what was on top of the terrified dog when he opened the door, but there was no time to investigate. So Sage came to Charkee’s rescue with the nearest weapon he could find.

“I just grabbed one of my Romeo slippers and I just started beating on its head,” said Sage, a 48-year-old electrical lineman.

It made no difference when he realized he was slapping a cougar.

“I just kept smacking it until it let go,” Sage said. “I’ve got no idea how many times, probably 10.”

Sage said he is used to seeing bears and other wildlife around his house and wasn’t afraid of the cougar.

“I’ve never found any that are really bold toward people,” he said, adding, however, that he’d never seen one on his front porch before.

“It never made any advances toward me,” he said. “It kind of looked up like, ‘Oh, man, you’re spoiling my dinner.’ It never ran. It just got up and walked slowly away.”

Sage said Charkee, a keeshond, has long hair that may have shielded her and saved her life in the attack a week ago last Monday.

When the Sages took Charkee to a veterinarian a few hours later, they discovered she wasn’t the only victim of a cougar mauling. Rich and Betty LaPierre, who live about a mile away, had taken in their similarly mauled beagle, Beasley.

The LaPierres said a cougar attacked Beasley about 5:30 the previous evening. Beasley ran down a hill at the LaPierres’ wooded farm with a puppy. The puppy ran back up the hill “like she had seen a ghost,” and Beasley let out a blood-curdling yelp, Rich LaPierre said.

The LaPierres apparently scared off what is believed to have been the same cougar that attacked Charkee. Both dogs suffered similar bite wounds, but Beasley was more seriously injured and died at the veterinarian’s office.

A 25-pound beagle with a crippled front leg, Beasley “probably didn’t have much of a chance with a cat like that,” Betty LaPierre said. “I miss that little guy.

The LaPierres said they’ve lost several cats recently and suspect the same cougar.

But the big cat finally met its match when it tried to eat a dog at Doug Mace’s house the night after the attack on Charkee. Mace, who lives across state Highway 20 from the Sages, attacked the cougar with a shotgun instead of a slipper, killing the animal.

State fish and wildlife officer Tim Hood had been planning to track the cougar with dogs and perhaps relocate or destroy it.

Hood said the 90-pound cougar appeared to be less than 2 years old. Although thin, it didn’t seem to be starving or in poor health. Hood speculated that the cougar simply found dogs easier to catch than other prey and developed a taste for them.

He noted that cougar populations are increasing everywhere in the region, and more people are living in rural areas. Even so, Hood said, attacks like last week’s are “awful rare.”

“Cougars don’t usually come around a house,” he said. “They don’t like the noise.”

However, LaPierre said a game officer in Okanogan County has asked him keep his hounds ready to track another cougar that recently killed several sheep about five miles west of where the dogs were attacked.

Meanwhile, the Sage and Mace dogs are recovering from their wounds.

Randy Sage said Charkee couldn’t bark for eight days - and she slept under the porch for the better part of a week.