GRIZZLY

The Dog Who Fought a Bear

It was about ten o’clock on a warm June morning when Paul Guitard decided to take his sled dogs for a run. As usual in the summer months, he harnessed his team up to his four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. His lead dog was a black and silver-grey purebred Siberian Husky named Grizzly . . .

They were about three kilometres down the trail when suddenly, out of nowhere, a black bear charged out of the bush. Before Paul had time to realize what was happening, the bear was on top of him and savagely biting his leg and arm.

“I looked over and saw two cubs on the path — we’d come between them and their mother — and I thought, Uh, oh. I’m in trouble! Then, all of a sudden, the bear pulled me right off my bike. The dogs went on a hundred metres or so and I thought they were gone.”

Normally, if Paul falls off or loses the team, the dogs just keep right on going. But Grizzly knew Paul was in trouble. He brought the team to a halt, turned them all and the bike and headed back to Paul. In harness and still attached to the rest of the team, Grizzly went for the bear. The bear released Paul and turned to fight the dog; Paul scrambled for the nearest tree. As he started up it, the bear’s jaws closed on his right foot.

“I was kicking her with my other foot, trying to make her let me go, and she was pulling me back down the tree,” Paul recalls. “Then Grizzly went at her again and started biting at her, so she let me go. I climbed up to the top of the tree fast!”

Grizzly stationed himself at the bottom of the tree, between Paul and the bear. The cubs ran to the other side of the trail and up a tree of their own.

“I expected that when everything calmed down everybody would leave,” Paul says. The cubs left after about two hours, but their mother stayed. Every twenty minutes or so she made another rush for the tree, and each time Grizzly fought her off. When he charged, the harness pulled all the other dogs forward too, but they weren’t about to help fight a bear. In fact, just to add to Grizzly’s problems, they began to fight among themselves — until Grizzly sorted them out.

The day became hotter. Paul sat in the tree, sweating, knowing he was going to be there for a while, until someone missed him and started trying to find him. His right arm and leg were bleeding badly, and he was in a lot of pain.

“I just sat up there and waited,” he says, “and every time the bear charged the tree I wondered, is she going to get up this time?”

But Grizzly kept her away. After three or four hours, the bear ambled about 200 metres off and settled herself down to sleep. Paul began to think about sneaking down the tree, unhooking the dogs, and getting away on the bike. Cautiously, he began to climb down.

“I got about halfway down. She put her head up, looked at me, and gave a kind of a grunt. She started to get up. ‘Hey, no problem!’ I said, and headed back up my tree.”

About an hour after that — six hours since the bear attacked — Paul finally heard more all-terrain vehicles coming. He knew it was probably his brother-in-law and friend coming to look for him. Paul screamed at them to go home and get a gun, so they turned around.

“That was the toughest time,” Paul says now, “because I was so close to getting saved, and if she got up there before they got back . . .” He broke a branch off the tree and made a little spear out of it — anything to keep the bear away if she did get up. But Grizzly remained on guard, and the bear didn’t get through.

At last Paul heard his friends returning. The bear heard them too. She crossed over to the other side of the trail and waited for them. Just as they came into sight, she charged. She was only a few metres away when Paul’s friend shot her. Paul stayed where he was long enough to make sure the bear was really dead; then, fighting pain and fatigue, he clambered down the tree.

The first thing he did was tend to Grizzly. The dog had only a small gash on his nose where one of the bear’s claws had caught him. In spite of being hampered by the harness and all the other dogs, he had still managed to be faster on his feet than the lumbering bear.

Paul, however, had a gash on his right arm and the calf of his right leg was cut open. And he found out later that he had broken his left ankle from kicking the bear in the nose.

“Not that it did much good,” he says now. “I think it only made her madder. It was Grizzly who saved me. I can honestly say, and I’ve said it a hundred times, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that dog. I’d be dead. That bear would have killed me.”

From Animal Heroes: 27 True Stories ,  copyright © 1995, 1996, 2001 by Karleen Bradford.