Bear gets mauled saving two little girls!

[Grandpa Shooter]

We were out on the remote land over the weekend with Bear our Black Lab Chow mix and our two little girls Cocoa and Snugs.



Cocoa is the all brown Lab Husky mix in the foreground with Snugs just behind her.

They wandered away from the camp and Bear, being the protective grumpy old grandpa type went with them.  My Lady realized they were gone and went hunting for them.  I looked up to see the two girls high tailing it back to the camp.  Bear was nowhere to be found.  We both started hunting him up and My Lady found him on the adjoining land.  He was limping and bleeding from the mouth.  On closer inspection we found gashes on his neck and ear, puncture wounds on his neck and face.  There were also gashes on his abdomen.

From the way he is acting I suspect he suffered some damage to his larynx since he can't bark.  He is eating soft food and dog treats and doesn't seem to be running a fever, but we will be watching him closely for the next week or so.  We have the feeling that some of the stray dogs in the area got after the girls and Bear jumped in to rescue them.  We are glad they were not hurt, but it pains me to watch Bear gimp around. 

Up til now I have been encouraging the stray dogs to stay off our property, but after this episode, I built a yard for our dogs so they can't wander away.  It connects to the one in the back so they have back, end and part of the front flat area.  Now I have to get more aggressive about strays.

[Boomhauer]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I shoot strays and coyotes on our land...

SSS.

Hope your dog recovers fully.

[Northwoods]

I have it on good authority that .300 Savage is very effective on maurading canis domesticus.  My FIL took out 5 that were attacking a foal on a ranch he worked on in his late teens.  He didn't need to reload the 5-round mag on his iron sighted Rem 721(??) either.  Last one was apparently hauling hind quarters to the tree line 200 yards out when he got tagged.

[AZRedhawk44]

My offer stands still, Gpa.  Let me know if you want an extra set of eyes and binoculars to glass your area and help thin any 'yotes or collarless strays.

How big exactly is Bear?  Not looking for anything too graphic here on the forum, but do the wounds to Bear look to be the work of one larger animal or a pack of several smaller ones?  And is your property anywhere near the grounds of the Mexican Grey Wolves that have been reintroduced to the White Mountains?

[Grandpa Shooter]

Bear stands around 20 inches at the shoulder and weighs somewhere around 90 pounds.  Problem is he is 12 1/2 years old and doesn't know it.  He plays rough with all of the puppies and lately breaks up fights if they get too rough.  I never expected him to accept another male in the house and yet he gets along well with all of them including Boone, who is bigger than Bear.

I used to have a Husky Wolf mix and he and Bear hated and tried to kill each other frequently.  I know Bear is ferocious when provoked and will not let go once he has his teeth in anything, including my hand.  The young guys around the bluff have a wolf hybrid chained to a tree out front of their place.  I wonder if Bear thought it was his old enemy and attacked him.  We have no way of knowing so we have to be super diligent about keeping our dogs on our land, otherwise I have no grounds for keeping other strays off my land.

I will go back out in a few days and take Bear with me so I can keep an eye on him as he heals, and I will see what can be done to curb the stray dog problem.  I know from driving around out there that only one person keeps his dogs in a yard.  The strays run everywhere.  So far I have only taken pot shots in their direction to scare them.  Might be time to step it up some.  Thanks for the offer Red.

[Balog]

My brothers were attacked by a pack of the turned feral dogs people would dump near our house.  If King (our Irish Setter/pitbull mix) hadn't been around to fight them off they could very well have killed my brothers. Feral dogs get shot on sight.

[HankB]

I'm just a little bit west of Austin, Texas - mostly a suburban area, but including some more rural sections that haven't been built up yet. Some people have a bit of livestock - horses, goats, donkeys, a few sheep - mostly small-scale stuff, there's not a big cattle ranch or pig farm or anything like that.

In the last month, one of these suburban farms has been hit twice by a pack of feral dogs. The owner managed to shoot several of these curs, but he's still suffered substantial losses.

[mtnbkr]

Nothing in the forest scares me more than the possibility of feral dogs.  I have no problem shooting one if it doesn't run from me.

Chris

[gunsmith]

hope he has a speedy recovery

[Balog]

Nothing in the forest scares me more than the possibility of feral dogs.  I have no problem shooting one if it doesn't run from me.

Chris

Fast, small vitals, generally ultiple attackers, possibility of rabies: feral dogs are scary.

[Jamisjockey]

Nothing in the forest scares me more than the possibility of feral dogs.  I have no problem shooting one if it doesn't run from me.

Chris

Amen. 

[Grandpa Shooter]

I am afraid some of the damage to Bear occured because we had him cut short for the unseasonable warm weather we have been having.  Usually he has about a 4 inch thick black body armor going for him which likely would have blunted the attack.

I built an addition to the run they have out behind the trailer which comes around the end and fills part of the flat area in front of our bedroom.  Of course it wasn't finished until after the attack.  That way if My Lady is out there alone the dogs control the back, bedroom end and bedroom door.  They can get onto the deck from the extended run leaving only the kitchen end without dog patrol.  Lord help them if they come in that way since the bedroom door faces the whole interior of the trailer.

[Matthew Carberry]

Lord help them if they come in that way since the bedroom door faces the whole interior of the trailer.

Which, of course, can be flooded with carbon monoxide from the heater... 

Glad to hear the big guy is okay.

[RaspberrySurprise]

You know when I first read the title I thought that an actual bear had gotten mauled saving two children from something, and it kinda broke my mind for a moment.