NJ dog attacked by a bear is expected to recover. Here's how to keep your pet safe

MONTAGUE — Here, in northwest New Jersey, black bears are becoming more common, and more dangerous.

There's been one hanging around the home of Michael Walsh and his neighbors for "a month or more," he said. "Real nasty bear; young male; not afraid of anything."

Even though Walsh spent 43 years with the state Division of Fish and Game before retiring, he had not reported the young male to the state until Thursday, the morning after his beloved Jessie, a 2-year-old black and tan hound, jumped off the front porch and into a black cloud of fur, claws and teeth.

"They (DFW) are coming this afternoon with a barrel trap," he said Thursday, while also waiting for a call from the local veterinarian who is treating the friendly — "still a pup" — dog, who suffered a long gash from chest to spine and maybe some internal injuries in her effort to get away.

On Friday, Jessie was back home, shaved and with bandages covering wounds that included claw and bite marks. Her back was dotted with "drains" to allow pus to escape.

"She'll be plenty sore for a while, but the vet said she will be OK," Walsh said, as Jessie was more interested in the camera than in posing to have her picture taken.

In the yard Friday was a large, green barrel trap installed by a black bear specialist from the state Division of Fish and Wildlife, intended to capture the bear with the acute approach to human/bruin relations.

Walsh said Jessie, who wears a special collar that keeps her within 30 feet of the house, was let out Wednesday night "to take a pee. She jumped off the deck and got attacked."

He described the attack as so sudden and so fierce that the dog "screamed like nothing you ever heard before" as she ran around the side of the house and down under the back deck to get away. "That bear went right under there to get her," he said.

Walsh lives among houses in a neighborhood of spacious, forested lots, not far from the Delaware River. He said the homeowners all share a responsibility with their neighbors not to leave garbage available for bears.

"We all wait until the hour when the collectors come," he explained. "Five, 10 minutes either side, they are here at 11 a.m.

"There's nothing here to attract them. But they're everywhere now. Now they're common," he added, nodding toward the other nearby homes

Nobody in the neighborhood had reported bears to officials, even with the presence of the young male bear who was becoming a nuisance.

The trap brought in by DFW is designed to capture bears alive, allowing technicians to release some, aversively treat others before release and euthanize the really troublesome bears. Seldom are bears relocated, because it has been proved that those bears will make every effort to return to the area where they were trapped.

And the bait in the trap? Walsh said, recalling his own work with bears during his career: "Yeah, they still use a Dunkin' Donuts peanut butter and jelly donut."

Related:Most NJ 'Category I' bear incidents occur in Sussex County. Here's what else we've learned

Sussex County commissioners discuss bear incidents

About the same time Wednesday as Jessie, described by Walsh as "the friendliest dog you'd every meet," was being attacked in Montague, the Sussex County Board of Commissioners was meeting in Newton.

During "commissioner comments," Dawn Fantasia spoke about the Fish and Wildlife Council's monthly meeting on Tuesday and the monthly report on black bear incidents reported to DFW. That report showed a threefold increase in numbers from the same period of 2021 and an increase over the previous reporting period of 2022.

Fantasia noted that even in Franklin Borough, where she lives, the number of bear sightings are up.

During his turn at the microphone, Commissioner Chris Carney got personal — his home has been the object of several bear attacks recently.

Carney provided a video of one encounter with a particular bear, recognized individually by the Carney family because it has been a nearly constant sight around the neighborhood for some time.

The video, taken by his son, who was leaving for work in the early morning, shows the bear trying to get under the front porch. Two calls of "Hey!" by the son got no response. A whispered curse word, however, was enough to cause the bear to back off and nonchalantly walk away.

Barely visible in the video is a slash from a bear's claw trying to get in the door on a previous occasion. Carney said he'd faced off with the bear when he entered his garage through a side door and the bruin was inside. The confrontation ended with the bear walking back out the front.

Carney said he has given up putting his trash out for the weekly collection.

"I leave early in the morning (for work), and even those couple of hours, the bears are in it," he said. "Now we keep the trash secured in the garage and I take it to the dump every couple of weeks."

The numbers of bear incidents reported each month to the Fish and Game Council is skewed, because those are just the reports to the state.

Fantasia lives in a municipality that has its own police department, which gets most of the bear complaints directly. While local and state police officers get training on bear encounters, there is no requirement for local departments to provide a monthly summary, or even an annual report, to the Division of Fish and Wildlife on encounters with wildlife reported to them by the public.

Keep pets safe from bear encounters

Dr. Ted Spinks, owner of The Animal Hospital of Sussex County, said precautions to avoid pet/bear encounters are pretty much the same as avoiding human/bear encounters.

"Usually a bear needs to be provoked" he said, but that provocation might be that the bear's territory has been encroached on.

And when walking with a dog, be aware of your surroundings. "You might see a mother bear on your right, and her cubs are on your left," he said. "Now you are between her and her cubs."

Keeping bears from around a house can be as simple as keeping food covered in airtight containers. "Don't feed your pets outdoors; keep your grill clean. Those aromas will attract bears," Spinks said. "It's been said a bear can smell peanut butter from a mile away."

When going for a walk, even down a local road, carry a noisemaker such as a whistle and bear spray. He noted that bears, even in Sussex County, are used to a lot of noise.

He said dogs and cats in the outdoors are also competition and food for other species. In addition to bears, the county has coyotes and birds of prey. An owl can easily swoop down and carry away a cat or small dog.

"And when walking in some areas, be aware there could be timber rattlesnakes there," Spinks said.

He said even his hospital along busy Route 206 in Augusta is not immune.

The staff has been forced to eliminate a popular and calming attraction for the cat waiting room: bird feeders outside the picture window.

"The bears would just come right up to the building and knock them down," he said. "We had to get rid of them."

This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: NJ dog attacked by bear expected to recover