274 LABRADOR 
They suddenly turned a point and ran right into him, so 
that the traces tangled round the bear before the astonished 
driver had time to unlash his gun. As soon as he could, 
he cut the traces, but even in harness the dogs kept Bruin 
at bay. Though the bear stood up to fight on his hind legs, 
the dogs managed to get in some good bites without being 
hurt. On another occasion a man brought me a specially 
valued dog that a bear had squeezed. The bear had been 
sighted some distance off on the ice-floe, and the dogs were 
slipped to hold him up for the hunter. By the time he 
arrived on the spot, they had the bear practically killed. 
But two had been damaged by him, one clawed and one 
squeezed. 
The Labrador wolf has never been known to kill a man. 
Yet on several occasions single men have fallen in with them. 
One man told me that a pack followed him almost to his 
own door, that they stopped when he stopped, and came 
as close as ten yards. He had no gun and no means of 
defence, yet they never touched him. The Labrador dog 
has much the same respect for man. He is, moreover, 
affectionate and playful. You can easily make a pet of 
him, if you treat him well. He is generally harmless to 
children when he is decently looked after, but a team 
of dogs together, however quiet, are never safe to strangers. 
Even a single dog, if kicked about, badly fed, and left to 
be worried by the neighbouring dogs every day of his life, 
cannot be trusted. 
The wolf will track a deer day after day till he captures 
it. Again and again our trappers have seen evidence of the 
indefatigable zeal and indomitable resolution of a single 
wolf in following a caribou herd; and observers all agree 
