Dogs teach bears tough lesson

LAKE WENATCHEE STATE PARK – The mere mention of the word “bear” is enough to get Mishka, Tuffy and Cassidy to stand at attention, poised to attack an animal that probably weighs at least 10 times more than they do.

Say “Bark at the bear!” and they’ll do it like actors on cue.

Give them a crack at an actual bear, and they’ll send it barreling away as if it had never encountered something so unpleasant.

After centuries of breeding in Finland, these Karelian bear dogs don’t show a hint of fear when they run toward a bear, pulling their handlers along as they bark furiously.

Once spooked, the bears tend to keep their distance for good, making them less likely to be shot and killed for wandering into places where they pose a danger to humans, said Carrie Hunt, a bear biologist who breeds and trains Karelians.

Hunt founded the Wind River Bear Institute in Heber City, Utah, in 1996 to develop a way to teach bears to stay away from roadsides, campgrounds and other places they don’t belong rather than just hauling them someplace else.

Two of her dogs, Tuffy and Cassidy, joined Mishka, the only Karelian owned by a wildlife officer in Washington state, for a recent training session here for wildlife managers who work in the North Cascades.

With their black and white coats and pointy ears, the dogs look a lot like border collies, only stockier and with fluffy, curly tails.

Sharp and obedient, they’re the key to Hunt’s tough-love approach to bear management, which she calls “bear shepherding” or “adverse conditioning.”

In carefully choreographed releases, Karelians on 7-foot leashes bark on either side of a bear trap, then chase the bear as it makes its dash to freedom.

“It’s a kick in the pants to see a 40-pound dog taking on an 800-pound bear who’s saying, ‘Oh, no!’” said Doug Zimmer, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wildlife officers standing near the dogs shoot beanbag rounds and rubber bullets at the bear’s rear end, then fire a loud round or two of noisy cracker shot in the air.

“Some of them say very quickly, ‘I don’t want to deal with this. I’m outta here,’” Hunt said. Others will try again, but usually leave for good after a few encounters with the Karelians.

There’s always an officer armed to kill the bear just in case, but Hunt said that last resort has never been needed. None of her dogs nor anyone handling them has ever been injured, and no bear has ever had to be killed.

So far the method has worked some 200 times, primarily in Montana and Alberta, and most recently in Washington, where two 400-pound black bears were trapped in the back yards of two rural homes southeast of Seattle.

One was set loose in a cleared-out area of Kanaskat-Palmer State Park, where the bear had been spotted a few times. A day later, the other bear was chased away in a remote area along the Snoqualmie River.

Rocky Spencer, a state wildlife biologist and the proud owner of Mishka, shouted words of encouragement to his 13-month-old dog during the first release. “Good boy! Bark at the bear! Good bark!”

Karelians aren’t cheap. Spencer bought Mishka for $2,000 with a grant from the Seattle chapter of Safari Club International Foundation, a wildlife conservation group.

Using the dogs in the field costs, too. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service footed the $6,000 bill for Hunt’s weeklong trip here, which included training for about two dozen state and federal wildlife managers, and help with the two bear releases.

While the 30,000-plus black bears in Washington often get into trouble, it’s the prospect of dealing with the rare and reclusive grizzly that’s driving the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s interest in the Karelians.

If grizzlies – listed as threatened in the Lower 48 states – began to cause trouble in the North Cascades, federal agents couldn’t shoot them unless a human was under direct attack, Zimmer said.

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