Her smaller dog—a 12-pound miniature Schnauzer—“kept barking” at the moose. Sarchett walked behind the car to summon the dog.

“That’s when the moose was, all of a sudden, three feet away from me, head down, and she butted me in the head,” Sarchett said. “It all happened very fast—they can move unbelievably fast. I didn’t even see her charge. Then she was gone.”

Sarchett said she briefly lost consciousness and only realized she had been knocked to the ground after coming to.

“It was stunning, the impact,” she said. “When I tried to sit up I saw psychedelic lights on my peripheral, and knew I had to go to the hospital.”

In addition to a concussion and broken nose, Sarchett suffered severe facial bruising, a thigh injury where the moose apparently kicked her and a tailbone injury from the fall. She was discharged from St. Luke’s Wood River early Saturday morning after a battery of scans revealed no life-threatening injuries.

Sarchett said she felt lucky to be alive and plans on keeping her dogs leashed at all times.

“I could have been killed just as easy as not. That’s why I think people have to know this story,” she said.

“This wasn’t the moose’s fault,” she added. “Lots of people walked by that moose before and it didn’t do a thing. The moose was not aggressive. If my dog hadn’t been barking, she would have left.”

It’s “very rare” for a moose to actually injure a person, said Mike McDonald, regional wildlife manager with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, but several “bluff” charges have been reported in the Wood River Valley. Dogs are usually a factor, he said.

“This is the second moose incident we’re aware of in the valley over the last ten-plus years,” he said Tuesday.

McDonald added that moose tend to view dogs as potential predators.

“Size of the dog doesn’t seem to matter,” he said.

McDonald said Friday’s incident has activated Fish and Game’s Wildlife Human Attack Response Team, or WHART, a group made up of conservation officers and biologists specifically trained to deal with incidents involving wildlife injury or attack on humans.

“The goal is to work cooperatively with and to serve as a resource for local law enforcement, EMS, and others in the event an attack occurs,” he said.

Fish and Game rarely euthanize moose and will always try to relocate aggressive moose to more suitable habitat first, according to regional Fish and Game spokesman Terry Thompson.

Last week, Fish and Game relocated another aggressive moose from Sun Valley to Fish Creek, north of Carey, Thompson said.

Thompson stressed that more moose and other large ungulates are out and about on roadways given the heavy snow load this year.

Over the weekend, a bull moose was hit near the Lane Ranch subdivision and apparently dragged by its antlers. Its body was retrieved by Fish and Game on Monday, Thompson said.

“The moose was 1.5 years old,” Thompson said. “We can confirm that it died due to injuries that could be attributed to being hit by a vehicle.”

He said the department was also aware of a cow moose and calf that were struck and killed on Highway 20 near the Hayspur Fish Hatchery in unincorporated Blaine County on Jan. 2