A 15-year-old boy who battled an aggressive black bear to rescue his family dog is sharing his hair-raising story.
Pierce Ormiston said their Wheaten terrier, Dublin, was attacked in the backyard of their home in Port Coquitlam, B.C. last Wednesday night while his parents were out.
Ormiston had just let the dog outside moments earlier. Since the family is used to seeing bears roaming the neighbourhood, the teenager said he clapped his hands to make sure it was safe.
At first, the yard was silent – until Dublin started barking at something by the fence.
“Then the bear jumps down on my dog,” Ormiston said. “I had no time to think. It was just me, the dog and the bear. I didn’t think about anything else.”
The teenager grabbed a wooden spoon and started banging it on a pot, hoping to scare the bear away. When that didn’t work, he took the pot, ran over and started bashing the bear with it.
Dublin was still trapped, though, so Ormiston headed back inside and found a six-inch kitchen knife.
“I grab that, go outside with the intentions not to stab the bear. I try to tackle it,” Ormiston said. “Nothing happened, so I stabbed it in the back above the shoulder blade.”
After that, he was finally able to grab the dog, run inside, and call his mom.
The parents came home to find a mess in the yard. Both Ormiston and Dublin were shaken but neither was seriously hurt.
“I looked at both of them and said ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’” his mom L.B. Blackburn said.
As far as the boy’s rescue is concerned, Blackburn said she’s impressed with her boy, but mainly relieved things turned out as well as they did.
“Very courageous to do that,” Blackburn said. “At the same time thinking, Oh my goodness! This is a bear; you don’t get into a fight with a bear.”
The family thinks the bear is the mother of two cubs they’ve seen in the area recently. A neighbour hasn’t been securing their garbage cans.
Conservation officers have set a trap for the injured animal, but so far it hasn’t returned.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Nafeesa Karim
