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Sometimes dogs save humans, sometimes humans save dogs. The latter was the case in Canada last week when a man punched a cougar that had a death grip on his 80-pound Husky’s neck, reports Reuters.

Will Gibb, a 31-year-old technician from Red Deer, had pulled up to a Tim Hortons for coffee and let his dogs Sasha and Mongo out of his truck for a quick run around the parking lot, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

When he heard Sasha yelping in pain seconds later, he “went running” to save her, he tells the CBC. But it wasn’t until he “punched it in the side of the head” that he saw the animal was a cougar.

(Sightings are common but attacks rare, says an RCMP deputy.) The cat ran into the woods, but the punch proved insufficient. As Gibb tried to pick up Sasha’s twitching body, the apparently confused dog bit him and the cougar reemerged, so he had to throw punches with his right arm while trying to protect his dog and his hurt left arm.

“She was fighting for her life,” Gibb says of Sasha, who ran to safety. When the cougar went for Mongo, Gibb grabbed a big stick and got in its way before chasing it off into the woods again.

With a vet clinic just a block away, Sasha was tended to quickly, while local police found and killed the cougar. The vet says Sasha had to be sewn up in her chest and had deep bites around her neck, but survived thanks to her owner.

(And you thought the guy who punched a kangaroo was brave.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Guy Punches Cougar to Save His Dogs

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