Posted on 09/03/2018 2:50:54 PM PDT by ETL
BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (AP) -- A woman says her dog has died after warding off a bear that broke into her family's North Carolina home.
WRAL reported Saturday that the incident occurred in Black Mountain, a town outside Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Tiffany Merrill said she thought she was going to die when the bear broke in. She yelled to her children to shut their doors.
Her dog Pickles quickly appeared. Merrill said the five-pound dog "started barking and got the bear's attention and got the bear outside and he saved my life."
Merrill said she couldn't save her dog's life. She said she "wanted to go out there and jump on the back of the bear and save my dog."
She now finds herself grieving. She said Pickles "was always with me."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That’s sad. Nice doggie. Well done.
Little dogs don’t know they’re little.
I’ve always said that if I were to get a dog, it would be one big enough to rip the throat out of a home invader, not one that attacks the toes and ankles.........
I hope they have souls and will be with us in Heaven.
They do and if for some reason they don't go to our heaven; I want to go to theirs (as someone once said).
Defending yourself and your family from a black bear attack using “Pickles” is a poor substitute over a firearm.
“Little dogs don’t know they’re little.”
Isn’t that the truth?! Our 18 pound Goldendoodle is fearless of anything, any size. This week he discovered deer on our property and he showed them who rules this roost.
I’m curious how it got into the home......and why didn’t she have a gun?
Black bears are all around here in North Carolina, but I never heard of one breaking into a home....
....the most they do here is drink the liquid from the hummingbird feeder.
I have a 17th year old Dachshund who still thinks she’s a Messerschmitt!
My sis lives in Black Mt. Bears are common visitors to the town’s neighborhoods. A few years ago one wrecked the cyclone fence in her backyard on it’s way out of Dodge.
The adjoining neighbor had one in it’s yard a month or so ago.
I learned as much about courage from that dog as I learned from any human.
Humans have put animals so much lower down the totem pole than is true and real.
The Church--mostly the Catholic Church--has taught us that animals have no soul and will not go to heaven.
On experience and intuition, I call bullshit on that.
I have seen animals demonstrate incredible courage and heart...much more than most humans I know.
Heaven would not be heaven without them.
And I would rather spend eternity with animals than Pope Francis and his pederastic apostles.
Sorry about the insult to the Catholic Church. I love the Church, but it is often wrong.
And sorry for the emotional outburst, but I am easily triggered into a fighting mood when animals are attacked unjustly.
Pickles got the job done.
LOL...a “Messerschmitt”. LOL.
Maybe he’s really a “Messerschmitthund”?
I think emotion developed in the brain first.
Eventually, emotions developed into thoughts and thoughts developed rationality and rational thinking.
It does not surprise me that animals have emotions. Emotions came before thought.
Opening narration:
“An old man and a hound-dog named Rip, off for an evening’s pleasure in quest of raccoon. Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog, and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight. These hunters won’t be coming home from the hill. They’re headed for the backwoods—of The Twilight Zone.”
Plot:
Hyder Simpson is an elderly mountain man who lives with his wife Rachel and his hound dog Rip in the backwoods. Rachel does not like having the dog indoors, but Rip saved Hyder’s life once and Hyder refuses to part with him. Rachel has seen some bad omens recently and warns Hyder not to go raccoon hunting that night.
When Rip dives into a pond after a raccoon, Hyder jumps in after him. Only the raccoon comes up out of the water. The next morning, Hyder and Rip wake up next to the pond. When they return home, Hyder finds that Rachel, the preacher, and the neighbors cannot hear or see him, and are tending to the burial of both him and Rip.
Walking along the road, Hyder and Rip encounter an unfamiliar fence and follow it. They come to a gate tended by a man, who explains that Hyder can enter the Elysian Fields of the afterlife.
Told that Rip cannot enter and will be taken to a special afterlife for dogs, Hyder angrily declines the offer of entry and decides to keep walking along the “Eternity Road,” saying, “Any place that’s too high-falutin’ for Rip is too fancy for me.”
Later, Hyder and Rip stop to rest and are met by a young man, who introduces himself as an angel dispatched to find them and bring them to Heaven.
When Hyder recounts his previous encounter, the angel tells him that the gate is actually the entrance to Hell. The gatekeeper had stopped Rip from entering because Rip would have smelled the brimstone inside and warned Hyder that something was wrong. The angel says, “You see, Mr. Simpson, a man, well, he’ll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But even the Devil can’t fool a dog!”
As the angel leads Hyder along the Eternity Road toward Heaven, he tells Hyder that a square dance and raccoon hunt are scheduled for that night. He also assures Hyder that Rachel, who will soon be coming along the road, will not be misled into entering Hell.
Closing narration:
“Travelers to unknown regions would be well advised to take along the family dog. He could just save you from entering the wrong gate. At least, it happened that way once—in a mountainous area of the Twilight Zone.”
My late father was from the other side of the Smokies, near Maryville and Knoxville. He met my late mom in New York City while on leave from the Navy in the ‘40s. He was a John Wayne lookalike. My mother was an Italian girl from Manhattan. We used to spend the summers there. They were among the best times of my life. My grandpa was 1/4 Cherokee.
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