ASCHAE’s DogBlog

Source: DuluthNewsTribune.com, June 19, 2009

Jada is a 15-pound hero. The eight-year-old dachshund hurled herself at a wolf June 9 to save a fellow canine, Lana.

As the dogs’ owner, Dana Lundeen, tells it, she was sitting on the front porch of her South Range home that afternoon when first Lana, then Jada, ran barking around the house. Suddenly, she heard an awful bark. Rounding the corner of the house, she saw a wolf about 75 yards away.

As Lundeen watched, it kicked aside the one-year-old Lana and grabbed Jada in its mouth. She ran toward them, yelling.

“I was screaming my lungs out, hoping he would drop her and he did,” Lundeen said.

As the wounded dog ran back toward the house, she said, the wolf took a few steps in Lundeen’s direction, than padded away.

“It happened so fast,” she said. “I was more worried about my dog than anything.”

Lundeen wrapped the bleeding dog in a blanket and called her 17-year-old son, Devin, home from Northwestern High School to help.

“I didn’t know if I’d have to shoot her,” Lundeen said. “I mean, her stomach’s hanging out. [Devin] says ‘Well, Mom, is she alive?’ Well, yeah. He said, ‘Well, then there’s hope.’ ”

They drove to Superior Animal Hospital, where the dachshund spent 3½ hours in surgery.

“They are awesome people there,” Lundeen said.

The wounds were similar to those seen when a larger dog attacks a smaller one, said veterinarian Bob McClellan. “The internal wounds are 10 times worse than what it looks like from the outside.”

Jada suffered crushed ribs, a spleen split in two, a collapsed lung and a left kidney that had been pulled away from the abdominal wall, he said. But the veterinarian was able to repair her, inside and out. After that, it was up to the dachshund.

“The dog’s a tough little dog,” McClellan said. “She hung in there.”

Sunday, she returned home to South Range.

“She’s full of many, many staples,” Lundeen said, affectionately calling the dog “Frankenweinie.”

Lana was uninjured.

Born and raised in South Range and living on Lundeen Road off County Highway V since October, Lundeen said she’s seen deer, coyotes, foxes, geese and more animals cross the 64-acre property regularly. Still, the wolf came as a surprise.

A winter 2008 survey by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources puts the number of wolves in the state between 626 to 662, nearly 100 more than the previous year. Most of them live in the north.

“Douglas County has some of the highest density of wolf populations in the state,” said Adrian Wydevan, a DNR mammal ecologist based out of Park Falls

“They are mostly shy, living out their lives in the forest,” he said.

But sometimes not. “Last year, we had seven cases of dogs attacked near people’s homes,” he said. One died, the others were only injured. That was mostly due to owners who were close enough to scare the wolves away.

McClellan noted that the amount of damage the wolf did to Jada with one bite was incredible.

“If the wolf had had a second bite, the dog would have been done,” he said. “Fortunately, Dana was there when it happened.”