All bark is just fine when a black bear is at the door

When we decided to move to the middle of the Santa Lucia Mountains in Cambria’s backcountry, we expected a lot of changes from suburban life, but at the very least we expected quiet and serenity. Because we have dogs, that quiet has been elusive whenever anything triggers the pooch alarm bells.

We have two large dogs and two small dogs. The small dogs mostly bark at the big dogs and are pretty much useless as early warning dogs. The big dogs each react to different “dangers” and are very good at sounding their mostly utterly useless alarms.

Our border collie, Laddie, is afraid of people. He’s even afraid of our friend, Doc Miller, who comes here often and has always been exceedingly sweet and patient with Laddie. We never have to worry that a burglar or mass murderer will get near our house without Laddie alerting us.

Blue, our Australian Shepherd, loves people. He wouldn’t bark at Attila the Hun if he appeared at our door with a battering ram. However, he feels the need to warn us whenever deer, skunks, foxes, raccoons, opossums or bobcats step a hoof or paw in our meadow. Blue’s concerns could come in handy if we ever have an unexpected visit from a crazed grizzly bear with a faulty GPS, but so far, we have been able to handle visits from normal woodland animals without much fuss or bother.

Although Blue might not be aware of this, the last grizzly bear in California was killed in August of 1922 in Tulare County. We need to let him know he can put that threat on the back burner.

However, just so you don’t think we worry needlessly about bears in general coming to our house uninvited, we did have problems with at least one California black bear a few years ago before we had Blue. During each visit, the bear did some relatively minor damage.

On his last nighttime sojourn in our neighborhood, the bear walked across our patio, right past the sliding door in our living room, and attempted to push open our front door.

Our little dog Katie, who was sleeping in the recliner by the sliding door, made only one short, quiet, “Woof.” That’s it. Hey Katie! There’s a B-E-A-R walking past the door. If we’d had Blue then, the bear would never have gotten so close to the house without a roar of protest.

So, regardless of the noise pollution from the little dogs when they perceive an affront by the big dogs (Mom, Blue’s looking at me.) and from the big dogs when some creature crosses their arbitrary line in the dirt and scares the peewadden out of them, we are grateful to know that no juvenile delinquent deer, killer opossum or friend with ulterior motives will ever be able to sneak up on us.

Whew! That’s a relief.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 10:05 AM with the headline "All bark is just fine when a black bear is at the door."