A rural New Mexico family was left in a state resembling heartbroken wonderment when they discovered their 12-year-old dog who’s afraid of the vacuum cleaner fought off a bear encroaching on their property.
Honey the dog was recorded in security camera audio having it out with the bear, newly emerged from hibernation and famished; with an eye and a nose on the 60 or so chickens that Denise Martinez houses in a coup on her property.
At risk might also have been the horses, or the other dogs, but Honey was having none of it.
She’s far from her prime years, and half-blind from an encounter with a porcupine, but still managed miraculously to ward off the ursine intruder despite suffering grievous injuries.
“She is our little savior—she’s always been protective that way,” Martinez told the Guardian in a brief phone call on Monday. “She risked her life to save not just the coop, but her family, from that bear.”
Martinez’s daughter, Leanna was the one who found Honey after she fell under the bear’s attacks, suffering deep punctures, bruising, and partial flaying around the head and neck.
The wounds were everything the chilling security camera audio of the battle sounded like they’d be, and the family didn’t imagine she’d pull through as they raced her to a local treatment center, Española Humane.
Once there, she underwent a battery of life-saving interventions, including surgery, medication, and frequent bandage changing. Flaying, or the removal of skin, is a common occurrence in bear attacks. The animal’s tongue is strong enough to take off the skin organ in its totality as easy was we might remove the point of an ice cream dollop.
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In spite of it all, Honey the “Bearslayer” pulled through.
“And because of her family’s love, a community who cares, and a little bit of … badassery, this half-blind sassy senior is still here,” Española Humane wrote in a Facebook post celebrating the fact that she pulled through.
Now at home, Honey can rest easy knowing she carried out the ultimate responsibility of any ranch dog, without paying the ultimate price, a testament both to her own inner strength, and that of all her race.
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