On the evening of September 19, wildlife photographer Adam Borkhus pulled over on a remote road near the Thoroughfare Valley outside Cody, Wyoming, to swap camera lenses while scouting for elk. He let his two-year-old Labrador retriever, Diesel, out of the car. Seconds later he heard a yelp — and found a mountain lion on top of his dog in the brush.
What followed lasted maybe 30 seconds. Borkhus, who is 6-foot-3 and around 300 pounds, was armed and carrying bear spray, but using either risked hitting Diesel. So he booted the cat in the face. It redirected its attention to him, pouncing and knocking him onto his back. He shielded himself with one hand, punched with the other, then grabbed the only hold he could find — the animal's ear — and wrenched it until the roughly 70-pound cougar fled. Both man and dog walked away with nothing worse than scratches; Borkhus drove himself an hour back to Cody and needed no stitches.
Wyoming Game and Fish later assessed that the cat was probably a juvenile, based on its behaviour. The Mountain Lion Foundation's Joshua Lisbon told Outside that an attack like this is about as rare as being struck by lightning — and Wyoming has never recorded a fatal cougar attack. The thinking is that the young cat wasn't hunting; it was as startled as Borkhus was, reacting defensively when a giant human came charging into the brush.
The setting matters, too. The Thoroughfare country near the southern edge of Yellowstone and the Teton Wilderness is considered one of the most remote spots in the Lower 48 — grizzly country, where Borkhus had seen bears but never a lion. Rare isn't the same as never, though: Colorado recorded its first fatal mountain lion attack in over 25 years in January 2026, and California saw its first in two decades in 2024.
For anyone hiking with a dog in the American West, the expert takeaways are straightforward. Keep dogs leashed or under reliable voice control in wild country. If a lion grabs your pet, reach for bear spray before wading into the fight — spraying both animals will likely end the encounter, and the effects fade in about 45 minutes (wash with soap and water, and resist the urge to rub). If a cougar comes at you, don't play dead: get big, make noise and fight back. Wyoming officials stress the odds remain firmly in your favour — as Lisbon put it, take knowledge, skill and bear spray into wild places, but leave the fear at home.
Borkhus, for his part, has no plans to change his routine ahead of the Wyoming hunting season. His take on living in the state's northwest: if wildlife scares you, you might as well move. Diesel, meanwhile, seems to have come away unusually tolerant of the family cats.
