This story, “The Dog Who Forgot to Fear,” appeared in the August 1976 issue of Outdoor Life.
Hook-jawed, humpbacked pink salmon swirled and scuttled in the clear shallow water of the Alaskan stream as hip-booted Alex Brogle, a fisheries technician, waded the riffles and crunched across the bars to tally the fish.
Ahead ran his wolflike black dog Rex. The dog disappeared around a bend, and moments later Alex heard the distinctive alarm bark that said, “Bear!” It was a warning he had heard many times.
Alex scrambled away from the stream toward a clear spot on a knoll. From there he looked down and saw a huge quick-moving brown-bear sow about 75 feet below him. She was standing up on her hind legs and was threatening the barking, dancing dog. Three half-grown cubs clustered nearby.
Danger comes in many forms in the wilderness, but nothing is more fearful than an angry half-ton sow brown bear with cubs. In seconds Alex climbed a tall spruce, and his hip boots didn’t hinder him a bit. Knowing he was safe, he called, “Here, Rex! That’s enough.”
Rex retreated to the base of the tree, watching suspiciously over his shoulder. The ruffled sow, back hairs still up, popped her teeth and whuffed her anger at the retreating dog. Then she gathered her triplets and hustled them out of sight.
For eight summers, from 1968 to 1975, Rex’s job was to warn Alex of bears while he waded streams to count salmon in Alaska’s Yakutat district on the wild gulf coast. Like Alex, the bears come to the streams because of the spawning salmon. Alex lost count of the number of times Rex had warned him of nearby bears. Rex had a deep fear of the big bears, and he never got close enough for the huge teeth or to touch him.
Alex Brogle’s partnership with Rex began in July 1967, when Alex was patrolling in Yakutat Bay in his Boston Whaler. He was surprised to see two dogs on the beach of lonely Khantaak Island, half a mile from the mainland. He landed and found a friendly black Labrador retriever bitch heavy with pups, and a standoffish mask-faced Siberian husky male. Alex later learned that their owners, who sometimes lived in an old cabin on the island, had been weeks delayed on a trip.
Brogle is a slim, master woodsman with a lifelong interest in animals, and the plight of the dogs worried him. The husky was fat from beachcombing mussels and other foods from the sea, but his black mate was thin and hungry, and wolfed Alex’s lunch. For several weeks thereafter Alex stopped on every patrol to feed and visit the lonely dogs.
One day the Labrador was no longer carrying pups, and she led Alex to the floor of the porch of the ramshackle cabin. There she whined and sniffed at a much gnawed and clawed hole in the floor. Alex reached into the hole and retrieved seven dead black puppies. The Lab had apparently dropped them into the hole for safety, and was then unable to reach them. The blind and helpless pups had died of starvation and exposure.
Alex felt he was partly to blame for their loss, and he comforted the whining bitch for some time. He decided it would be best if he weighted the pups and dropped them into the bay. But just before leaving the island, he removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and reached farther into the hole under the porch. He was astonished to find one more pup, just barely alive.
Alex tucked the puppy inside his shirt for warmth, hurried to his boat, and sped to the village of Yakutat, where he fed the puppy warm milk. The black ball of fur came back to life, wriggled, and snuffled until put into a box by the stove at the fishery station. The owners of the two dogs on Khantaak Island returned shortly thereafter. Later the Labrador died in an accident on the island. The Siberian, now an old dog, is still alive in Yakutat.
“Rex didn’t have a mother to feed and teach him,” Alex told me, “and he had no littermates to play with. I became his whole world. He imitated my behavior, and he never did learn to play with other dogs.”
The Yakutat region is a wilderness where hump-shouldered moose roam and where the spine-tingling howls of timber wolves are often heard. The focus of Alex’s life, however, are the streams that head in the nearby snowpeaked St. Elias Mountains and wind through spruce forests to the violent Gulf of Alaska. Alex has managed the commercial fishery there for the state of Alaska since 1961. When he finds enough spawning salmon in the streams, he announces legal fishing time for the local commercial fishermen, who can then lay their nets for the fat silvery salmon. If Alex decides there aren’t enough salmon in the streams, the fishermen have to wait. His counts must be very accurate.
Even when the dog was tiny and almost helpless, Alex often carried Rex in a coat pocket on his aerial and foot surveys of the salmon streams. Humpy Creek, a mile-long stream near Yakutat, is small and brushy. The salmon in it must be counted on foot. Once that summer, Alex carried Rex while surveying the stream. He put Rex in shallow water near spawning salmon, and a splashing fish swam near and knocked the black pup on his side. Rex yipped and yelped, but once he was back in Alex’s arms, he growled fiercely at the swirling fish.
Even at that tender age, Rex’s hackles lifted, whenever his button nose caught bear-tainted air.
These unpredictable fishing bears make stream surveys afoot very dangerous along much of Alaska’s coast. Few years pass without someone being killed or terribly mauled by a furious coastal brown. Fishery biologists all have horror stories about the big bears. The Department of Fish and Game has a policy that calls for a rifle-carrying companion to accompany everyone who makes a salmon survey afoot.
Once, when he was counting salmon at Humpy Creek with an inexperienced summer employee as his guard, Alex heard the rifle bolt slam several times. He turned and saw the guard staring in terror at a giant bear that was standing on hind legs on the bank. The bear was peering down at the two men with its piglike eyes.
“Let me have the rifle,” Alex said calmly after noticing that the guard, in his panic, had pumped four live rounds of ammunition through the rifle and onto the ground. One cartridge was in the chamber, and the magazine was empty.
The two men backed away slowly. With each step, the bear’s hackles lowered. Finally the bear dropped to all fours and disappeared into the thick devil’s club and alder brush. The overwrought assistant collapsed and fell into the stream.
Rex was four months old that October when Alex left him in Yakutat with Larry and Caroline Powell and their two children. Alex was heading south for his annual job switch to ski instructor, and there was no place in his winter life for a bird dog. He traveled a lot, mixed with hundreds of skiers, lived in crowded quarters. A dog would have been a nuisance.
Alex returned to Yakutat the following May and drove to the Powells’ house. Rex, now nearly full grown, leaped into his pickup truck and, despite commands from Alex and Larry Powell, refused to get out. Alex was his master.
Alex didn’t deliberately set out to train Rex to be a bear sentry. The dog trained himself with Alex’s encouragement. The dog’s awareness of the big bears and his fear of them stemmed from a day during his second summer when he and Alex were driving along a sandy coastal beach in an open Jeep. A huge brown suddenly galloped into sight ahead. Rex leaped out of the Jeep and swiftly caught up with the bear. Alex was amazed when the big dog slashed his sharp teeth into the rear of the galloping bear.
The bear skidded to a stop in a cloud of sand. Out of the cloud came a yipping black dog, headed for the Jeep, closely followed by the enraged bear. Alex drove toward the running animals and honked his horn and revved the engine, hoping to frighten the bear away.
“Rex leaped into the speeding Jeep and damned near broke his neck doing it,” Alex remembers. Alex spun the vehicle around and raced away, glancing over his shoulder until the pursuing bear gave up the chase. Miraculously, Rex was unhurt.
Many Alaskans will tell you that it’s dangerous to keep a dog in bear country. If the dog tangles with a grizzly or a brown, the dog often becomes terrified and runs to its master for protection. If the bear is angry enough, it often jumps the man. But Rex seemed to learn something from that incident on the beach. He seldom led bears to Alex afterward, but he wasn’t infallible. When the dog was really frightened, he wanted Alex to share his trouble, and Alex always did his best — even if he did so while perched on a limb high in a tree. Rex always gave loud and clear warning.
Rex had a special growl whenever he sensed a bear during a stream survey. If the wind was right, the dog could smell a bear as far as 200 yards away, and he invariably warned Alex. When Rex located a bear, he pointed his sensitive nose at it and continued to point the bear while he and Alex walked past. Sometimes Rex even walked backward after passing a bear so he could continue to face the menace, which was usually hidden in brush. Alex could tell how close the bear was by how high Rex lifted his hackles.
By the end of his second summer Rex had reached his mature weight of 85 pounds. He looked like a black husky with small white markings on chest and left hind foot. Strangers often thought he was part wolf. His upthrust ears, deep chest, heavy neck, and thick coat came from his Siberian husky sire. His dense fur kept him warm when he curled up to sleep in the snow with his nose buried in his bushy tail. The Siberian blood made him aloof to strangers, except for children, whom he loved.
Siberian Eskimos developed the husky as a workdog, and the animals were brought to Alaska during the gold rush early in this century. They are valued in the North as sled dogs of great speed and stamina, and Rex often ran behind Alex’s pickup truck for as far as 20 miles without stopping. If it was cold, so much the better. Rime often froze on his black face and chest, and his long tongue lolled from his grinning mouth as he leaped along.
From his gentle Labrador dam came his wagging tail, the oil in his black coat, and his soft brown eyes. From her too probably came his hunting-dog sense of smell and his love of the water. It was the Labrador retriever’s desire to please that made Rex so tractable. He even retrieved ducks that Alex shot.
That fall Alex again left Rex with the Powells when he followed the geese south. But Rex developed an embarrassing possessiveness. In the Powell’s general store he growled at customers, and he constantly fought and whipped visiting dogs. He was overprotective toward seven-year-old Michele and two-year-old Brandon Powell.
When Alex returned in the spring, Larry Powell suggested that it might be best if Rex did not spend the winters at the store. After that, Rex lived and traveled with Alex all year. He guarded the fishery station and Alex’s truck. He stood barking into the wind at the bow of the speeding patrol boat. He waited while Alex made streamsurvey flights, and he accompanied him when he had to walk streams to make his salmon counts.
Again and again Rex warned Alex of nearby bears. Once, he drove a big sow and her two nearly grown cubs from the garden Alex had planted at the fishery station. Alex watched carefully and observed that Rex always kept a safe distance from the bears. He barked, danced, and threatened, but he was quick to dodge or run.
Alex was apprehensive when he took Rex out of Alaska that winter. The wilderness-bred dog had never encountered crowds, livestock, traffic. But at California’s Sugar Bowl ski area, where Alex instructed, Rex quickly adapted. He howled when the ski-school bell rang, and then trotted away and remained off the slopes, where he might have tripped a skier.
Rex disgraced himself once. He resented a huge young St. Bernard dog. At Easter a parade was scheduled, and several hundred skiers gathered on a large porch. Many carried eggs or candy in baskets. The St. Bernard was begging for food and attention when Rex arrived and leaped at the rear of the bigger dog. There he clung-biting, growling, and half riding the frantically fleeing St. Bernard through the crowd.
Skiers were knocked down, Easter baskets and eggs flew through the air, and women screamed. The St. Bernard finally escaped by leaping off a high porch. Rex lost his grip.
Alex was furious. Such behavior in Yakutat was one thing, but at the Sugar Bowl it was unforgiveable. He beat Rex with the handle of a ski pole because he had to make it clear that he was the dog’s master and that Rex had to behave. Half the crowd shrieked at Alex for being cruel to the dog; others urged him to destroy the vicious dog.
After the thrashing, Rex lay in a corner, refusing to move or to look at Alex for a whole day and night. But finally he crept to Alex for forgiveness.
Alex never again had to physically punish the sensitive dog. A vocal warning was sufficient.
Rex disliked men with long hair, those with a strong body odor, and people who had been drinking. He probably took his cues from Alex. When he disliked someone who was with Alex, the dog placed himself squarely between the two. He couldn’t have made himself any clearer if he had said, “I don’t trust you near my master.”
The wolfish black dog and the slim fisheries technician-skier were as close as only a bachelor in his 40’s and his dog can be. Rex knew about 20 word combinations, including “This way,” “We’ll go in the jeep,” and “We’ll go in the pickup.” With the last two, he always jumped into the right vehicle.
Rex communicated his mood to Alex by demeanor and facial expression as well as by voice. He had a pleasure growl, an anger growl, his bear growl. He had special whines for attention, and various other tones that Alex learned to interpret.
On August 30, 1975, Alex had to make a foot survey of Humpy Creek. No one was available to accompany him as guard, so he took Rex on a leash, and for last-resort bear protection he carried a .44 Magnum revolver in a hip holster.
Humpy Creek was alive with 15,000 spawning and dying pink salmon. Spawned-out dead salmon lined the banks, and clean-picked fishbones were strewn everywhere. Dozens of gorged seagulls squatted on the sandbars, and their droppings whitewashed the shoreline. The smell of dead fish fouled the air, and flies buzzed over rotting salmon. Alex and Rex flushed several overweight bald eagles that had been picking at dead fish. Here and there a raven or a fish crow quarreled with the gulls for a salmon. Fresh brown bear tracks covered the banks and dimpled the sandbars.
Alex and Rex paid little attention to this life that flowed with the death of the salmon; they had seen it hundreds of times. Alex got busy counting. For every 25 live fish in the stream, he punched his hand counter once.
Halfway along on the mile-long stream, Rex growled bear, and his hackles rose. He pointed his nose across the stream.
This too was an old story, and Alex knew what to expect. He watched as a large male brown bear stood briefly on hind legs, peered at the intruders, and then dropped to all fours and silently disappeared into the brush.
Then Alex heard brush crackle and gravel crunch close behind him. He whirled and faced one of the most fearsome sights any man ever sees. A huge brown bear was in full charge toward him. The bear was less than 15 yards away.
Alex dropped Rex’s leash and reached for his revolver. The bear came on at full speed to within seven yards and reared up on hind legs to tower over man and dog while still moving forward. Rex launched himself in a tremendous leap at the bear’s throat before Alex’s gun was out of the holster.
Alex still shakes his head in wonder at Rex’s response to the charge. After hundreds of bear encounters, the dog had a healthy fear of the great animals, but he instantly leaped at the great bear.
As Rex leaped, so did Alex. His ski-trained muscles propelled him in a six-foot jump that put him atop a three-foot bank.
He landed with the handgun out and whirled to see Rex on the bear’s chest with jaws open and white teeth reaching. Alex aimed to miss and fired a shot over the bear’s head, hoping to frighten the animal, but the bear closed its forelegs and pinned Rex to its chest. Then it bit savagely at the dog.
The bear dropped Rex into the shallows, and Alex stood poised, .44 ready, held in both hands. The dog was limp and did not move in the water.
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The great bear was through. It dropped to all fours and leaped into the brush. Moments later Alex saw the animal running up a low hill followed by two cubs. Alex believes the sow had scented the male bear they had seen across the creek, but then had heard their steps on the gravel. It seems likely that she thought the scent and the noise came from the same source. The sow probably believed she was going to drive a boar away from her cubs and fishing ground. Because the sow was downwind, Rex had been unable to smell her.
Rex was dead, his neck broken by one savage bite. His life-debt to Alex was paid. When the shaking stopped and the shock lessened, Alex carried the warm body into the forest and placed it deep among the exposed roots of a tree. Rex lay there as though sleeping.
Later Alex nailed a marker on a spire-topped spruce on the bank of Humpy Creek: “In Memory of Rex, Who Here Sacrificed His Life to Save His Master. August 30, 1975.” In his official report to Dave Cantillon, his superior in Juneau, Alex wrote that Rex ” … stopped the bear six yards from me … and lunged into certain death in order to save my life.”
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