Wolf Kills, Eats Dog After Battle With Owner

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Excerpt:

HAINES -- A Haines woman beat back a wolf with a ski pole but was unable to keep it from killing and devouring one of four dogs she was walking with during a midday ordeal near 40 Mile Haines Highway.

... Working the perimeter, the wolf was able to lunge and pin each of the dogs momentarily, before the other dogs and Bochart chased it off. Four times it pinned 16-year-old Mason, a husky-lab-rottweiler mix that was the largest of the four pets. Still, it was smaller than the wolf Bochart estimated at the shoulder would stand about as tall as her hip.

... After about 20 minutes of skirmishes, the wolf pinned Little Bear, a bearded collie mutt. "Mason exploded and attacked her. That was the first real dogfight. ... The wolf got him by the throat and killed him in an instant. It was done in a second. Without ever looking at us, she began eating his body, with us standing right there," Bochart said.

 The story is long and detailed. Read the whole thing at the link.

Idaho Cyclist Pursued by Wolf on Alaska Highway

SPOKANE, Wash. — Growing up in the Yukon, Melanie Klassen had seen numerous bicycle tourists pedaling the Alaska Highway, but never one with a canine companion running behind him.

"I thought it was odd until I saw the panicked look on the biker's face - as though he was about to be eaten," she said in a telephone interview.

"That wasn't a dog; it was a wolf."

The cyclist, William "Mac" Hollan, 35, of Sandpoint, Idaho, verified Klassen's observation of Saturday's incident: "At this point I realized I might not be going home, and I began to panic at the thought of how much it was going to hurt."

The wolf nipped at the bike's rear packs the way it would bite the hamstrings of a fleeing moose in the drawn-out ordeal of subduing large prey.

Hollan, who was prepared for grizzly encounters, blasted the wolf with bursts of bear spray on several occasions. He said the wolf would fade back 20 feet or so and then move up again.

Full story here.