CATARACT, Wis. — Without Dude, Jason Schindler said he wouldn’t be alive.

The 27-year-old Cataract man said Dude, his 8-year-old mixed-breed hound, jumped between Schindler and an attacking black bear Thursday night and into the bear’s grasp.
It spared his owner but ultimately cost Dude his life after he was dragged to the bear’s den, sustaining at least 28 puncture wounds to his chest and neck that hours of emergency surgery by Debbie Padilla at the Sparta Veterinary Clinic couldn’t fix.

“I’d hate for someone else’s dog to go through what mine did,” Schindler said. He and his wife, Kimberly, buried the dog in a blanket and pillow outside his parent’s house in Sparta Friday, using a rented jackhammer to dig the grave in the frozen soil.

Dude’s act of heroism gave Schindler’s daughter, Emiley, 4, a new appreciation for the canine.

“We always called him a ‘dumb dog’ because he did some pretty weird things,” Schindler said. “But tonight Emiley said, ‘I love that dumb dog.’”

Schindler said he heard Dude yelping loudly Thursday after dark at the family’s rental estate, on about 600 acres in rural Cataract. He figured he had treed a coon, so he went out with a spotlight and a .22. Shortly thereafter, his spotlight died, but he kept walking in the dark toward the dog’s impassioned yelps.

He finally caught up to him beside a pile of downed trees. He peeked his head around, Schindler said, and “all I saw was this dark thing lunging at me” in the night. Dude, at his side, jumped between the two and was quickly snatched up in the bear’s jaw.

“If not for the dog, I wouldn’t be standing here,” Schindler said.

The bear, estimated by a Department of Natural Resources official who visited Friday to be between 400 and 500 pounds, dragged the dog to his nearby den, about four feet deep and under a thicket of downed trees.

Schindler returned to his house, he said, and grabbed a working spotlight and a .30-30. He returned to the scene, where the bear again lunged at him. He fired his rifle, possibly hitting his target, before the bear fled into the woods. He rescued his dog, gushing blood but breathing, and rushed him to the veterinary hospital.

Schindler had never seen a bear on the property. The DNR official said the bear may have been confused into coming partially out of hibernation by the unseasonably warm midweek weather, and the dog’s loud barking may have been an unwelcome alarm clock. The official said there’s one other known black bear in the Cataract area.

Schindler said it concludes an uncanny life for Dude. He was the last of a litter of puppies available at the Monroe County Animal Shelter when Schindler found him eight years ago and adopted him the next day. Another week in the shelter and he would have been euthanized, Schindler said.

“I saw him lying there alone in his cage and I felt so bad for him,” he said. “In a way he was a miracle dog.”

Dan Simmons can be reached at (608) 791-8217 or dsimmons@lacrossetribune.com.

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