An alligator has one of the strongest bite forces in the animal kingdom, but one Florida gator was no match for Kim Spencer, who pried the reptile’s jaws open after it attacked her dog. According to Fox 13, Spencer was walking her 9-year-old dog, Kona, when she heard something in the nearby lake.

A 6 1/2-foot alligator lunged out of the lake and bit Kona around the shoulders with her entire head inside its mouth. Spencer said she dove onto the gator’s back, straddling it as she pried its jaws open with her bare hands. Her effort worked.

“We just got lucky because just as quickly as it ran after us it went back in the water and I got up and we were out of there,” she says.

Spencer says she and her husband are empty nesters, and she sees Kona as her “baby” so she didn’t hesitate to put herself in danger.

During an interview with FOX 13, she turned to Kona, who was wearing a cone and laying on a dog bed next to a stuffed alligator and said, “Yep, you owe mommy forever.”

According to People, Spencer ended up with stitches, and Kona suffered deep bite wounds.