People walking their dogs in bear country shouldn’t rely on Fido to be an early warning system or come to their aid in an attack, a new study suggests.

Researchers Thom Smith, Stephen Herrero and Lana Ciarniello and others looked at 326 bear-dog incidents across the U.S. and Canada in their study “The Canine Conundrum: Is a dog help or hindrance in bear country?” published in May in the Journal of Wildlife Management.

By parsing the data of the incidents, they found that a full one-third of the dogs did not come to the aid of the owner. 

“Undermining the hope that a dog may divert the bear’s attention from people and defend them from the (bear),” the study found.

Having said that, many owners were likely to come to the aid of their dog, women in particular.

“We found that women were twice as likely as men to physically engage a bear,” the authors said. In many cases, they used nothing more than their fists.

The study suggests that dog owners should use a leash where possible and carry bear deterrents like bear spray or a firearm to reduce the risk of injury to both the dog and its owner.

“We found that few people in our incidents carried deterrents (i.e. bear spray or firearms). It may be that some people forego carrying a bear deterrent because they consider a companion dog to be their bear detection and deterrent option. Regardless, it would greatly improve both human and dog safety if people carried a bear deterrent or firearm on their recreational hikes. In cases where bear spray was carried, (10% of incidents) it was 69.2% effective at terminating a bear dog encounter and a firearm (30% of instances) was 93.3% effective,” the authors noted.

Broader studies that looked at bear encounters without dogs have suggested that use of bear spray is even more effective than firearms, with a 93% efficacy rate, compared to 75% of firearms, the study noted.

The authors suggested the difference in the dog study might be due to the relatively small sample size in the dog incidents, as most people didn’t have a deterrent at all.

Most bear-dog incidents were with single black bears, which makes sense as black bears are far more common continent-wide than brown bears.

Alaska had the most conflicts and bear conflicts were most common from May through September.

Most conflicts were in developed “front country” areas, suggesting that people carry deterrents while walking dogs in bear prone areas and parks. (River’s Edge Park in Columbia Falls often has bears, particularly once the berries along the river and slough ripen). 

In half of all conflicts, bears physically contacted the dog and most dogs (85%) were off leash. Though there were no fatalities of humans when the dog was on a leash. The study did not parse out whether the dogs were simply being walked or hunting dogs. Hunting dogs are typically not leashed.

Hunting or not, 12% of dogs chased the bear. Conversely, 15% of the cases the bear ignored the dog.

The off-leash dogs were killed in 20.9% of the incidents and additionally 11.4% had severe injuries. In 96 of the cases people rushed to the aid of the dog and of those, 51.3% fought with the bear.

“None of those people possessed a firearm or other deterrent,” the study noted. Seventy-five percent broke up the fight, though two dogs died of wounds and 17 people suffered slight to serious wounds.