Wild dog packs roam Navajo Nation

The 55-year-old man was found lying on the side of the road on the Navajo Nation, a pack of dogs mauling him relentlessly. Emergency workers chased them away, but the pack — their ribs sticking out — kept trying to circle back. It was not determined whether the dogs or a seizure felled Larry Armstrong as he went for a walk near his rural home last December. An autopsy report said he died from the bites, but investigators were unable to determine if he was even conscious when he was attacked. Regardless, the case vividly underscored the problems the Navajo Nation — and many other tribal lands — have with stray, feral or just neglected and loose dogs. On the vast Navajo Nation, wildlife and animal control manager Kevin Gleason estimates there are four to five dogs for each of the more than 89,000 households — or as many as 445,000 dogs, most of which roam unchecked, killing livestock and biting people with alarming regularity. "They kill everything," Gleason said in a recent interview. "Cats, dogs, cattle, sheep, horses. We've also had people severely injured by them. We've had people with horrendous bites. We just had a case ... where a man lost 37 sheep to a pack of dogs. "We have that going on all the time. Our officers respond to more than 25 bite cases a month, and 25 livestock damage cases a month."...more