Animals

Army veteran trampled by herd of cows ‘thought she was going to die’


Janicke Tvedt was walking her dog when cows who saw her as a threat to their calves attacked her (Pictures: SWNS)

An ex-army officer has been left with life-changing injuries after being trampled by a herd of cows.

Janicke Tvedt, 55, thought she would die when she and partner David Hood, 57, ran into cows who saw them as a threat to their calves on July 25 last year.

She spent more than two days in hospital and now has to use a colostomy bag and struggles to bend down and get up.

Janicke had walked the rural path, in Masham, near Harrogate in North Yorkshire, with her dog many times before.

But things were drastically different last summer, when she passed a hedge and found herself facing a horned cow and its two calves.

The cow was ‘obviously startled’ and started running towards her eight-year-old labrador Goose.

‘Loads more cows came to her defence’, leaving the couple and their pet pinned against the hedge.

As Goose was attacked for a second time, the cow clipped Janicke on the knees – pushing her to the ground. She was stuck on the floor while around 30 cows trampled her.

At one point, one of the cows reared up on its hind legs and trampled Janicke’s face (Picture: SWNS)
Janicke kept blacking out as she was airlifted to hospital (Picture: SWNS)
The veteran had walked the path were she got attacked multiple times (Picture: SWNS)

Describing the horrific attack, she said: ‘One of them, the black one, kept raising itself up on its hind legs and then stamping its front legs actually down on me.

‘It trampled me at least four times on my abdomen and chest, and then once on my face, but I had my arm across my face.

‘I’ve still got a mark on my cheek where I think it crushed my glasses into my face.

‘Then one of them knocked another over, and it fell and landed on my legs, and then did a complete body roll over my body.

‘So I was crushed by the weight of it – these were absolutely massive rearing cattle, with horns.

‘I was terrified. Apparently, I was shouting at the cows. But they were snorting, mooing and grunting. They were pawing their hooves on the ground.’

The dog walker was in hospital for more than two days due to her terrible injuries (Picture: SWNS)
During the attack, Janicke’s abdomen swelled ‘like a watermelon’ (Picture: SWNS)

It was when the cows eventually pulled back that Janicke had time to realise how injured she was.

She said: ‘I kept blacking out, and I knew then that something was seriously wrong.

‘My abdomen was like a watermelon. It was swollen and distended and really quite solid – not normal and squishy. I was in such pain in my chest.’

She and David, who had been forced to watch helplessly, managed to climb a nearby tree before the cows returned to continue their onslaught.

Her partner held her up there for around 20 minutes – during which time she blacked out three times.

David was finally able to get away through a golf course and used someone’s phone to call for help, getting Janicke airlifted by an ambulance.

In hospital, Janicke was sedated and required an emergency operation to remove part of her colon that had ‘died’ as a result of the attack.

She then needed to have a colostomy bag fitted, which she still wears today.

When she finally came round two days later, in a delirious state, she was too scared to sleep or self-administer her morphine drip as she believed she ‘wouldn’t wake up’.

She said: ‘I was convinced I was going to die. I was trying to get in contact with my son because as far as I was concerned, that was it – I wasn’t going to see anyone again.’

Janicke has since been persevering through a long road to recovery. She used to swim three times a week and walk up to eight kilometres a day but her body cannot do that now.

Only now has she begun to be able to bend over and stand up again.

She said: ‘I’ve had to accept what I can and can’t do. That’s been really hard. It’s affected my relationship with my partner as well. That’s been really difficult. But he’s been really supportive.’

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