Bear rub on my backyard !

[FEENIX]

... the culprit ...
















A Karelian Bear Dog!



" Thor ", my hunting and hiking companion, is now 6 months old and is doing very well.


Ed

[royinidaho]

Ed,

Got me on that one.

What is it that those dogs are supposed to do?

[winmag]

They hunt Karelian Bears ROY, see him guardin that tree? It looks innocent enough, but he's planning an ambush!
Ever wonder why you dont see any Karelian Bears? Now you know why. Theyre good at it.

Seriously tho Feenix,.....What do they do? Ive never even hered of the breed.

[FEENIX]

Karelian Bear dogs (KBD) have been trained to hunt small game ranging from squirrels to hares upwards to big game such as elk and bear. They are very courageous as they will ward off wolf, moose and bear. Bear Dogs are protective and loyal to their masters willing to risk their own life in order to protect their master. Lately, KBDs are also used in search and rescue efforts.

The first time I saw a KBD was in a news video with a wildlife biologist in MT, working with the Canadian park rangers (IIRC?). The video showed them going after a grizzly (no actual contact encounters shown). The idea was to change the behavior of the trouble bears and send the message that they are not welcomed.

Check out these links ...

Dogs 101: Karelian Bear Dog : Video : Animal Planet

Contrary to what the animal planet video said that they are not good with family with children and is hard to train, they are very gentle and good with kids. I trained mine with basic sign and voice commands when he was 8 weeks old with success.

YouTube - CGKids Season106 - Following the Foothills (2/3)

YouTube - Karelian Beardogs on News12

[royinidaho]

Interesting dog! From its response to heal and sit, a border collie it isn't.

This may have been the dog breed being tested by the University of WY as a bear alert for hikers. The idea was two fold. Warn hikers of a bear well before they inadvertently got too close and to make it a bad experience for the bear.

I had Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dogs at the time and tho't "Why not?" I communicated with the program head several times to get their thoughts and things were progressing.

I had my dogs trained my way for working nasty cattle. For example the dog would tease a rank mother cow towards me as I drifted towards the corral. It took a while but worked well. Before ol' mother cow realized what was happening she and calf were in the corral.

My ol' knoggin' visualized a griz in place of the cow and figured, nah, another one of your bad ideas and went back to shootin'.

[Russ Hatch]

We used to use the dog to toll the mother away while we doctored the new born calves. That was my job as soon as I was big enough, check the 60 head of cows in the pasture twice a day during calving time. Working dogs are great, good company too.