Sitka-The dog that was attack was a Blue Heeler, John only has one wolf cross dog.
WDFW Looking Into Whether It Can Reimburse Twisp Man For Dog’s Wolf-attack Injuries
By Andy Walgamott, on March 14th, 2013
UPDATED 7:15 A.M. MARCH 15, 2013: The Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife is looking into whether it can reimburse a Methow Valley man’s vet bills after acknowledging that his dog was attacked by a wolf early Sunday morning.
John Stevie’s Siberian husky-wolf hybrid mix, Shelby, suffered wounds to the right side of her face in the battle on his porch in the countryside south of Twisp.
“It had her head in its mouth,” Stevie recalls seeing.
Another one of his dogs, an estimated 100-pound male named Lopi and also a hybrid, chased the wolf off, according to Stevie and state fish and wildlife officers.
The initial vet bill was $289, and he’s had to take Shelby back a second time. He says it could run up to $600 or $700.
Since WDFW investigated the attack earlier this week and determined it was indeed a wolf, wildlife managers have been trying to figure out if the agency can legally pay for the injuries.
The wolf management plan does allow payouts for “guarding/herding animals” working with livestock, such as the Martinez sheep company’s dog injured by the Teanaway wolves in 2011. It does not specifically state that reimbursements can be made for domestic animals. It notes that Wisconsin is the only state that pays for injuries to human companion dogs.
However, WDFW does have copies of the vet bill.
There has been spirited discussion online about whether WDFW should pay for the injuries to Shelby or not. As of late Thursday afternoon, we were waiting for final word from a high-ranking wolf manager on that front.
A representative of a wolf advocacy group active in the valley said that philosophically his organization isn’t against pitching in on the vet bill, but hasn’t budgeted for that aspect of wolf management, though they have provided funding for a range rider in another wolf territory where cattle are grazed.
Stevie, a 47-year-old third-generation Methow Valley resident who owns 40 acres at the base of McClure Mountain and is avowedly anti-wolf, said he usually keeps Shelby, inside at night but let her out around 11 p.m. on Saturday to go pee.
“She tells me when she wants to come back in,” he says.
Lopi is kept inside because of his tendency to wander.
Somewhere around 1:30 a.m. Stevie and his partner, Sharon Willowa, were awoken by a “ruckus in the kitchen.”
Running to the scene, he found Lopi “going crazy” trying to get out a French door, and heard Shelby on the deck.
Opening the door, he said he found a “100-plus-pound wolf had the female down.”
Stevie says he didn’t know what to do — but Lopi did.
“The male darted out and attacked it. The wolf jumped off the deck and the male chased it through the creek bottom,” he says.
Within a few hours of reporting the incident, two fish and wildlife officers, Jason Day and Troy McCormick, and wildlife biologist Jeff Heinlen came out late Sunday morning and spent, Stevie estimates, four hours investigating the scene.
“They looked at the tracks and decided it was a wolf,” Stevie says.
A single set of paw prints, measuring 41/2 inches at their widest, led away from the deck, according to a 17-page report by the officers.
AN IMAGE FROM WDFW'S REPORT SHOWS THE WIDTH OF THE ATTACKING WOLF'S TRACK, HIGHLIGHTED WITH A BLACK POWDER TO MAKE IT STAND OUT AGAINST THE SNOW. (WDFW)
Lopi’s tracks were an inch-and-a-half narrower, the report says and a photo inside it indicates.
It says the investigators followed the tracks as best they could across mud, crusted snow, and past compost material that had been recently disturbed and included some old fish bones.
It also describes Shelby as visibly shaken, bleeding from a couple locations and with a puncture wound to the ear; Stevie’s vet later old them the dog had multiple bite wounds to the head, ear and neck.
IMAGES FROM WDFW'S INVESTIGATION SHOW THE LOCATION WHERE THE WOLF HAD THE DOG PINNED AND SHELBY BEFORE BEING TAKEN TO THE VETERINARIAN; FOR IMAGES AFTER THE DOG WAS WORKED ON, SEE METHOWVALLEYNEWS.COM, OMAKCHRONICLE.COM AND HUNTING-WASHINGTON.COM. (WDFW)
An officer said that Stevie described the attacking wolf as “coyote or grayish colored with a very dark side, but not quite black.”
Another WDFW report says that Day, McCormick and Heinlen briefed three other WDFW wolf managers as well as a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service supervisor and a U.S. Department of Agriculture supervisor before the trio determined on Monday that it was indeed a “confirmed wolf depredation.”
Online, there was some early scuttle that the state employees suggested the dog was attacked by a cougar instead.
Stevie says that they did ask him that question at first, as well as if he thought it had been a domestic animal.
Day’s write-up shows that he was considering the possibility that it was a wolf before he even arrived because he says, knowing of their keen interest in wolf matters, he informed the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office of the incident on his way to the scene.
The attacking wolf was either one of the two known to live in the Lookout Pack territory — they’d been sighted within a mile of the incident earlier in the year — or a wolf that’s dispersing through the area.
One of the Smackout males, WA 17M, which was collared last summer, was reported at the site of a dumped livestock carcass in the Similkameen Valley about 35 air miles to the north-northeast of Twisp earlier this month, but wears a black coat. Last month, a Teanaway female was spotted about that same distance to the south-southwest between Entiat and Lake Chelan; it’s more gray.
By an unusual coincidence, the attack also came just two days after the state Senate passed a bill that would allow citizens to shoot wolves attacking their livestock or pets anywhere in Washington, and regardless of the predator’s classification on state and federal protections. SB 5187 is now in the House where it will have a hearing on March 20 before the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.
Another bill that cleared the Senate, SB 5193, would allow “WDFW to offer cash, and well as non-cash, compensation … for all wildlife damage to crops, livestock, other property, and mitigating actions.” It also sets the price of a wolf license plate at $50 — as well as other wildlife-themed plates — starting in 2014. It was passed on a 28-21 vote on Wednesday.
As for what’s next with the wolves in the Methow Valley, with last year’s calf depredation on the Thurlow Ranch by the Lookout Pack, WDFW is on the alert.
“We are monitoring closely. We hope it’s not a Wedge situation,” said state wolf manager Donny Martorello.
The key will be whether any wolves switch from natural prey to other sources, as in northern Stevens County with the Wedge Pack last year, as winter winds down and spring begins.
It’s unclear whether any breeding activity occurred here; none did last year, but Martorello points out that there are likely many more wolves than what WDFW knows about roaming the countryside.
He also notes that lessons from the Northern Rockies show that 80 percent of packs stay out of trouble, but those 20 percent that do cause problems need to be dealt with swiftly and aggressively.
For his part, Stevie acknowledges living in the country.
“This is a prime spot for every animal you can imagine. That’s why I have my dogs,” he says.
He also has a 12-year-old.
“I’m just glad it didn’t happen to my son,” he adds.
Wolf attacks on humans have been fleetingly rare in North America in modern times.
But more incidents of this sort, though also rare, will occur as Washington’s wolf population builds. There have also been a number of human-wolf encounters now as well, several of which we’ve chronicled on this blog.
http://nwsportsmanmag.com/2012/09/13/republic-area-wolf-dog-standoff-reported/http://nwsportsmanmag.com/2011/11/10/newspaper-reports-on-unnerving-wolf-encounter-in-lake-chelan-nra/http://nwsportsmanmag.com/2012/01/31/hunter-details-another-wolf-encounter-in-kittitas-co/And it’s another reminder that wolves aren’t just creatures of the wilderness, and that in the colder months, they’re down with the deer and other game, in the settled valleys.
As the local USFS biologist John Rohrer told us for a story on another area resident’s sightings above Carlton and a BBC crew’s taping of a documentary in the Methow Valley, “People want to think of wolves as a symbol of wilderness and remoteness, but (in winter and spring) they’re right outside people’s doors.”
In this case, that’s where a wolf tangled with a dog.
It’s at least the second WDFW-acknowledged wolf-dog confrontation
http://nwsportsmanmag.com/2013/03/14/wdfw-looking-into-whether-it-can-reimburse-twisp-man-for-dogs-wolf-attack-injuries/#.UUJvayM95GE.facebook 
From the information I have this would be attack number seven just in the Methow Valley, all reported to WDFW. I was talking with Joel Krets last night he said he has been receiving info of other attacks also.
It would seem WDFW has a memory problem when it come to reporting wolf problems from around the country to the public. I can see where it might hurt their story of one maybe two wolves in the Methow if the truth were to come out that there are several packs.
Just last summer we had reports of wolf pups sighted in five differrant locations throughout the Methow. We know that in ID, MT and WY wolf packs have been documented to have up to three litters per pack, I'm quite sure that isn't the case in the Methow Valley. I think we need a differrant wolf biologist in the Methow, one that isn't tied to Conservation NW.
