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.