German Shepherd Jumps From Vehicle, Tries To Run Down Wolf In Yellowstone

It was likely curiosity, not viciousness, that caused a German shepherd to leap from its owner’s vehicle and briefly chase a juvenile wolf in Yellowstone National Park on Friday, a park tour guide said. 

“I think the dog took an advantage of an opportunity, to chase after another ‘dog,’” MacNeil Lyons told Cowboy State Daily. 

After the young wolf screwed up enough courage to stop and stand its ground, the wolf and dog had a brief standoff, about 12 feet apart. 

The dog then “responded to its owner’s voice commands” and returned to the vehicle, said Lyons, who watched the incident unfold and captured photographs of it. 

The two canines apparently never made direct contact with each other, and both emerged unscathed, he said. 

Lyons defended the dog’s owner, who he said he had spoken with, but declined to name. 

According to the owner’s account, the dog escaped because of a safety feature that rolls the windows down in the owner’s 2024 Jeep, even though the owner was trying to keep the dog contained, Lyons said. 

“A lot of people were berating him. People online don’t know him and don’t know the scenario,” said Lyons, a former park ranger who runs Yellowstone Insight educational tours.  

It’s against park regulations to let pets run loose, or chase wildlife. As of Monday there were no records of any citation or court action connected to the incident. 

Juvenile Wolves Get Bored, Go Wandering 

Lyons said he’s not sure if the wolf was a male or female, only that it appeared to be a juvenile, perhaps a yearling. 

He thinks it’s from the Wapiti wolf pack, which he’s familiar with. 

The wolves in that pack are acclimated to the presence of people during tourist season, he said. 

“They live in the heart of the park” where wolves are protected from hunting and trapping, he said. 

“They’ve never experienced people in a negative way,” Lyons added, so they’re not particularly fearful of humans.

The pack’s den is on one side of an open valley and there is a “food source” in the form of a big game animal carcass on the other, he said. 

The wolves must cross a river and highway to get to the feeding site and have been doing so regularly, he said. 

As to why a juvenile wolf was off by itself, Lyons said that was probably because of adolescent restlessness. 

This time of year, the adult wolves are busy at the den, tending to pups that were born sometime around April. 

It’s natural when “the adolescent wolf gets bored out of its gourd” and goes wandering alone in familiar parts of the pack’s territory, he said. 

‘Whoa, You’re A Bigger Dog’

He said because it was young, the wolf was probably initially intimidated by the dog and took flight. 

The German shepherd initially chased the wolf “like a fighter pilot locked in on the target,” the situation changed when the wolf composed itself and stood its ground.

“The German shepherd seemed to realize, ‘Whoa, you’re a bigger dog,’” and decided to not get any closer, he said. 

Lyons said he didn’t hear the animals exchanging any barks or growls.  

Window Safety Feature Backfires

Lyons said that on Friday, the dog’s owner was driving along the highway, with the dog in the back seat, and the windows down far enough for the dog to stick its head out. 

The driver saw a bunch of vehicles and a crowd of people up ahead. Knowing that the people had probably stopped to gawk at wildlife, the owner pressed the switch to roll up the Jeep’s rear window, Lyons said. 

The trouble was, the owner hasn’t had the vehicle for long and forgot that it has safety sensors on the rear windows, intended to keep children’s limbs or heads from getting caught when windows are rolling up, he said. 

What likely happened was, upon sensing the dog’s snout or head, the windows stopped and apparently rolled back down. 

So, even though the owner was trying to keep his dog contained, it had an open window when it spotted the wolf and couldn’t resist the temptation to jump out and chase it, Lyons said. 

Automotive writer Aaron Turpen of Cheyenne confirmed that many newer vehicles have such a safety feature on the rear windows. 

“Most at least stop” the windows from rolling up, Turpen told Cowboy State Daily. 

“Some older cars have plastic gears in the window regulator that are meant to break when meeting too much resistance,” he added. 

Be ‘The Smart Two-Legged One’

While Lyons thinks the dog’s owner made an honest mistake, he said that some of the other people who stopped for the wolf were ignorant.

Many of them got out of their vehicles, and at one point were just a few feet away from the wolf, he said. 

According to park regulations, visitors on foot must stay at least 100 yards away from bears and wolves, and 25 yards from all other wildlife. 

As soon as the wolf got closer than 100 yards, as it was moving toward the road, people should have gotten into their vehicles and stayed there, Lyons said. 

“You have to be the smart two-legged one and get back in your vehicle,” he said. 

He said that when he tried telling people to stay back from the wolf, some of them ignored him and one man approached him, getting almost angry enough to start a physical confrontation. 

Despite stupid human tricks at the scene, Lyons said he’s glad that the dog and wolf stayed reasonably calm and didn’t tangle with each other. 

“It was the best-case ending” to the encounter, he said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.