Colorado woman found dead after apparent bear attack

that’s my neck of the woods (SW Colorado) and saw this in local paper.  Wondering what if anything the two dogs she had with her had to do with the attack?

Black bear attacks on dogs with people are pretty common in North America. Fatalities (to the people) are rare in these situations. Last year a women with two dogs was killed by a sow with two cubs along the border between Minnesota and Canada. Steven Herrero wrote a paper about dog + people + black bear interactions a while ago: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/dogs-may-trigger-black-bear-attacks-says-calgary-researcher-1.2665606

My impression is that dogs are helpful in camp – the black bear then is in thief mode and the game is up when the dog blows their cover – but potentially dangerous when hiking. Based on what I’ve read, I consider black bears much more dangerous if I am hiking with my dog (mostly dangerous to my dog) than if I were hiking alone. My dog is not the type that would instigate anything with a bear, but a bear might see him as competition or prey.

A few recent examples:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-woman-fights-black-bear-1.3567714

https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/03/us/pennsylvania-bear-attack

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/he-just-kept-coming-kamloops-dog-walker-survives-bear-attack-1.5141271

I was surprised the two dogs made it home alive. The bear went for the largest (human) threat and the dogs got away.

No details available in the press reports to figure out if the bear went for her, or went for her dogs and she got in the middle of it. Black bears do stalk, kill and eat one or two people in North America each year, but most of these predatory attacks are done by wild bears, usually big males in early spring or late autumn, in remote areas – most such predations have occurred in Canada and Alaska. These seem to be bears that have had no contact with humans, big, confident but hungry bears that decide to roll the dice on a novel food choice.

My dog and I encountered a sow and two cubs last spring. We were off trail and he was ahead of me. I saw him move ahead and to my right and was suprised, as I thought he’d veered left. I then realized I was looking at a bear about 50 yards away. So then where’s my dog? I spotted him (black with some white) off to the left. He was unaware of the bear. My eyes shot back to the right and found that the bear had moved its body behind a tree but was looking at me from the far side of the trunk.  Two cubs scrambled up a tree nearby. I quickly walked toward my dog, trying to make sure I was between him and the bears if he caught wind of them. Luckily, he never did. If he had, things could have gone badly. He is an avid squirrel hunter and sometimes barks at a treed squirrel. If he’d seen the cubs in the tree, it could have resulted in the sow going into defensive mode, then me following suit, then me and the bear getting in conflict and her deciding to make a meal of me once she realized how fat and weak I am. More likely, I could have called off my dog, as he is trained, and we moved away together anyway. Black bears are not, contrary to conventional wisdom, as agressive in cub defense as brown bears. But I am glad he didn’t see or smell them.

Another time in the same area I suddenly heard a crash to my left, then saw a big male’s behind shooting away up a hill. My dog emerged from the brush just a bit ahead of where I saw the bear’s butt. There was no sign that he’d seen or smelled the bear. I think the bear ran when he became aware of me, but must have been aware of my dog too, as he was ahead of me. So in that case the bear was probably aware of both me and my dog and ran from one or both of us. Again, my dog did not seem to perceive the bear. More luck for us.

Different eco-system up here where there are grizzlies and the black bears act like prey not predators, but at least with grizzlies, the concern is that your dog will sniff out a bear, realize they’re in over their head, and come back to you sometimes with the bear in pursuit.  That’s how some of our local DLP (defense of life or property) brown-bear incidents started.

I trained our dog to come back to me as soon as she senses anything (bear, moose, humans) ahead of us on the trail.  She detects them long before I do, comes back with a particular “I came back like you wanted, where’s my treat?” look, I leash her up and continue on.

But there have been other times that she just refuses to go on.  A dog that LOVES to hike.  Hard stop.  Always in an area that could have grizzlies (berries or salmon around).  So we turn around.

With a very easy-to-train dog (lab-aussie mix) and bit of effort by the human, I feel she increases our safety on the trail.  Numerous times, she comes to a stop and I look up to see usually a moose but sometimes a bear.

But 94.7% of dogs?  They’d make it worse if unleashed on the trail.

“make a meal of me once she realized how fat and weak I am”

You’re not fat, just calorie-dense.