In 2003, when the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife launched their Karelian Bear Dog Program (KBDP) with one dog, Mishka, it was viewed as an anomaly, an outlier, a longshot that would probably fail. Yet it didn’t. Instead, it was successful and quickly became a poster child for outside-the-box thinking in controlling wildlife predators’ interactions with a continually expanding human populace. Organizations from as far away as Japan and as close as California reached out for advice on establishing like-minded buffers. The furry-faced dogs and their handlers were featured across a wide array of media platforms, and the future of the privately funded program seemed bright until it wasn’t.
