Florence-area man fends off wolf that attacked dog
FLORENCE � Don Burgess loves a good outdoor adventure story.
The former hunting editor of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation�s Bugle magazine never imagined one of his best would happen right in his backyard.
It�s been about a week and a half now since Burgess was awakened from a deep sleep at about 5 a.m. to the sound of an obvious struggle outside his bedroom.
Burgess lives about 100 feet from One Horse Creek, just about one mile west of the only stoplight in Florence.
�It was a pretty loud vocalization just outside the house,� he remembered. �It was a real alarming kind of sound. It was like someone was hollering with a gag in their mouth. I thought, �Gee, that dog is in trouble.� �
He jumped out of bed and reached for his flashlight but ended up grabbing a canister of pepper spray instead.
�Ordinarily, I would have grabbed my pistol, but there wasn�t time,� Burgess said. �I ran downstairs in my skivvies and put on a pair of flip-flops and ran outside.�
He was met with a strange silence.
�The noise had been going pretty strong all this time, but by the time I got out the door, it had gone quiet,� he said.
He shone his flashlight around. One of his dogs was there sniffing the ground next to the back step, but he couldn�t see the other, a heavily muscled boxer that weighs about 65 pounds.
He walked over to the creek and shone his light there.
�I didn�t see or hear anything,� he said.
So he turned upstream and walked along a little trail that went back toward the creek.
�I was starting to feel like it was too late,� he said. �I didn�t hear any sound anymore. It seemed like such a bad deal. I mean, we both love our dog.�
And then he heard something just across the creek.
It sounded like something was attempting to growl with its mouth full. In his flashlight�s beam, he spotted something on the other side of the creek.
�It was a little spooky,� Burgess said. �It gave me a bearing where the dog was, and so I waded across the creek.�
He lost a flip-flop along the way.
When he lifted his flashlight again, he spotted them five feet away up against the base of a big cottonwood tree.
�They were real close,� he said. �Way closer than I thought they would be. This thing was facing me with its head down and apparently holding my dog in its mouth. Nothing was moving. I popped the pepper spray.�
Immediately, the light-colored wolf let go of the dog and stood sideways to Burgess.
�Here I was with this light looking through an orange cloud at this scene unfolding before me,� he said. �It was like a flash photo of this wolf with its head leaning forward and its tail standing straight out.
�I had this little snapshot of him and then he was gone.�
Burgess was sure that his dog was going to be shredded to pieces.
�I�ll be darn if it didn�t crawl out of the brush and slink back across the creek without even stopping to say hi to me,� he said. �It waded back across the creek and back to the house.�
It was met by Burgess� wife, standing there on the deck with a rifle in her hands.
�The only thing she could find to grab was a pellet gun,� he said. �The dog was so traumatized that all it could do was quiver. It went under the kitchen table and stayed for a long time.�
The dog�s only injuries were two puncture wounds. One was on top of its muzzle and the other underneath one of its eyes.
Later in the week, Burgess asked a state wolf biologist about the difference between the bite on the canine teeth of a coyote and a wolf. He was told a coyote�s teeth might span up to an inch and a half. A wolf�s would measure more than 2 inches wide.
�I measured the span at 2 1/4 inches,� he said. �That sealed the deal for me that it was a wolf.�
His boxer is 65 pounds of muscle.
�He�s a buff boxer. He looks like he�s half pit bull,� Burgess said. �He definitely more than met his match that night. Psychologically, it�s taken him several days to get over it. He still goes out on the deck and sniffs and looks around. He�s not very sure of himself anymore.�
To this day, Burgess can�t be sure what it was that wolf wanted with his dog.
�I still puzzled over what that wolf was trying to do,� he said. �My dog may have attacked it and it was just defending itself. It might just have been thinking how it was going to let this thing in its mouth go.
�I�m still shaking my head about it all. It all happened so fast. All of it probably happened in a span of two or three minutes.�
It will definitely be one of those stories told and retold.
�It�s a good one to tell for a long time to come,� he said. �I can tell people to top that when they say they have a good wolf story to tell.�
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