GYPSUM, Colo. -- A 150-pound Great Pyrenees had to be put down after it was attacked by a mountain lion outside a home in Gypsum.

Tara Haymond said she woke up around 2 a.m. Sunday and heard her dog, Bubba, crying.

"I thought I better tell him to be quiet so he wouldn't bother the neighbor," Haymond told the Eagle Valley Enterprise newspaper.

She opened the sliding door next to the bed and discovered a mountain lion on top of Bubba.

"There is nothing in anybody that would prepare them to find that," Haymond said.

Haymond grabbed a shotgun but couldn't find ammunition, so she said she started hitting the cat with the gun.

"The cat didn't even flinch," Haymond told the Enterprise newspaper. "Then I realized the cat might hurt me so I stopped. I guess I might be lucky in that way."

Haymond backed off and called sheriff's deputies.

The mountain lion was still on the dog when they arrived and didn't move until the sheriff fired on it several times, Haymond said.

Bubba was still suffering, however, so the sheriff put him down as well at the owners' request.

Wildlife officials say attacks on animals in populated areas are rare. They say the mountain lion, which was young and very skinny, may have been sick or starving or both.