Alaska moose attack against Iditarod sled team leaves 4 dogs injured

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week — and the attack didn't end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.

She said on Facebook Friday that the moose, after seriously injuring four of her dogs, wouldn't leave and that the ordeal stopped only after she called friends for help and one showed up with a high powered rifle and killed the moose with one shot.

"This has been the most horrific past 24 hours of my life," she posted after the Thursday moose attack on the Salcha River trail system near Fairbanks.

ALASKA 'FREEDOM CONVOY' HELD IN SUPPORT OF CANADA TRUCKERS' ANTI-MANDATE PROTESTS

But just days later, her four dogs are on the mend and she's back training with the others.

"This isn’t what I was planning for, but these dogs and myself have trained for so long and so hard for this race ... when I walk back out to my dog yard and I have 12 perfectly healthy dogs out of the 16 and they look at me and all they want to do is run, how can I tell them no?" she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "That would be selfish of me."

"These are freaking amazing athletes that just survived probably the most traumatic experience of any dog team ever in history, and they’re survivors and they’re still pushing through," she added.

Watkins said that the attack, first reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, happened while she was on a 52-mile (83.7-kilometer) training run for the nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts March 5 in Anchorage.

"As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and