maybe we should use chow chows?

[Emily]

This is from a local paper in the Hudson Valley.

Bear, dogs scuffle in Saugerties By ROBERT M. MIRALDI, Freeman staff
Posted by: "renniedragon" renfest@mindspring.com renwoodstock
Sat Nov 10, 2007 4:46 pm (PST)

The dogs in the story are Merilyns best friends and neighbors

SAUGERTIES - Thinking his home was being burglarized, a Saugerties
man came face-to-face with a black bear early Sunday morning before
his dogs came to the rescue.

Daniel Kelly, of Valk Road in Saugerties, said he and his wife awoke
at approximately 2:15 a.m. Sunday to a neighbor's dog barking and
considerable noise in his back yard. Kelly opened his back door where
the bear stood a few feet away. Without the aid of his glasses, Kelly
thought it was a burglar and yelled at the figure.

Luckily, his two 50-pound chow-chow dogs realized this was no burglar
and attacked the bear, wrestling with it for close to 20 minutes.
Somehow in the struggle between dog and bear, Kelly was blocked from
his back door and could not get back in the house.

At one point, he said, the bear tried to climb over the 6-foot fence
in his yard, only to be pulled back into the yard by his normally
docile dogs. Kelly, who estimated the bear to be slightly taller than
his 5-foot 7-inch frame and over 150 pounds, was eventually able to
get back in the house and retrieve his 12-gauge shotgun. His wife
called 911.

Kelly, who hadn't fired a gun in 20 years, went back to aid his dogs
and once again got too close. The bear again took a swipe at him from
close-range before he fired a warning shot. This was enough to scare
the bear up a tree. Kelly said the bear, which he had no interest in
killing, left soon thereafter.

Kelly, who said he half-expected to have to put one of his dogs out
if its misery with his gun, was shocked to find them in perfect
condition, minus a scratch to one dog's hind-quarters.

Saugerties police responded not long after the bear left. Kelly said
Saugerties police also called for the Department of Environmental
Conservation, but they never arrived.