A Chihuahua Named Mina

Here is a true story that happened last year in July.  A woman named Sarah and her boyfriend, Mark, were camping at this place called Cle Elum, which is a town in the Cascade Mountains not too far from Seattle.  Anyway, they went hiking, and suddenly they saw something huge and hairy coming out of the woods.  At first, Sarah thought it was a great big wolf, but it turned out to be a black bear!

Mina was very brave and maybe a little foolish, so she ran toward the bear and barked a whole bunch.  She was trying to protect her people, just like any brave and faithful dog would do.  Except that the bear was way bigger than Mina was.  So the bear just gave Mina a swat with one paw and sent her flying.

Sarah and Mark though Mina must have been killed by the bear, which made them really sad.  But they did not run away.  They just stood there, and the bear looked at them and then it turned around and went away.  I think it did this because of the fierceness of Mina, the chihuahua.  Or maybe the the bear just remembered something it had meant to do back at home in its den.

Luckily, it turned out that Mina didn't get killed, but one of the bear's claws cut Mina's tummy.  So Mina had to have some surgery and stitches, but she got well again.  Her mom said "I feel like she's my protector, my little hero," which is what Mina was, of course.

My mom says that Mina must not have been on a leash, or otherwise she couldn't have gone running over to attack the bear.  And Mom says that if Mina had been on a leash, she probably wouldn't have got hurt by the bear at all.  But I say that if Mina hadn't been able to defend her humans from the bear, the bear might have just eaten them up, chomp, chomp!  And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.