Dogs & Bears

The view of God’s Mountain was breathtaking. I felt as though I was exactly where I was meant to be as I looked out the cabin’s loft window. The college and career ministry team from my church had returned to help around the youth mission camp after being there four months earlier to do repairs on a home in the Appalachian. God’s Mountain is in the Vonore and Tellico Plains areas of Tennessee.   As I looked out the window I saw two dogs. Randy and Phyllis, who run the camp, have about six dogs that roam freely over their eighty eight acres. I had not seen these two dogs when I was there months earlier.  I ran down the stairs and out on to the porch to have a closer look at the scruffy Saint Bernard and young yellow Labrador retriever. They were friendly but hesitant to come close and then eventually approached for me to pet them. I found out the dogs, Mosby, the Saint Bernard, and Stuart, the lab, both named after officers in the civil war, belonged to the camp’s neighbor.

One day Randy, Phyllis and I were talking about the bears in the area. Their neighbor’s garage had a doggie door big enough for Mosby to get through. One night he heard Mosby barking and went to investigate. A bear had come through the doggie dog and ran off with the dog food.

Another neighbor had a similar episode. He overheard his dogs barking in their kennel and looked out the window. There was this huge black bear on his porch, reaching up to get the dog food off the top shelf and then rambled off with the food.

Phyllis recalled the bear that came near their home. They contacted the rangers at the national forest next to their property who set up a bear cage. A few weeks later in the middle of the night she woke Randy up. “We have a bear in the trap’ she told him. They quickly rode over to see the bear but could only see a black nose. When the rangers opened the trap, it wasn’t a bear but Lady their golden retriever. A couple of weeks later, they heard the trap again. This time there was no mistaken they had a bear and he was not happy. The rangers weighed, tagged, and then returned him to the forest.

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