A group of tourists in Yellowstone National Park witnessed some canine-induced chaos Friday when a German shepherd jumped out of a moving car to chase down a gray wolf. The incident concluded as quickly as it began, with neither animal injured, according to local tour guide MacNeil Lyons, who captured the commotion in a brilliant series of photographs he shared to Facebook.
In one photo, a different tour guide is seen chasing after the German shepherd, which is already running full-speed down the paved road. Another photo shows the tense moment when the yearling wolf stood its ground and the two canines faced off less than 15 feet away from each other. Lyons says this is when things could have turned ugly.
“It was a stare down for a hot second,” he tells Outdoor Life. “I think there was a moment where the wolf didn’t quite understand what was happening, and what this dog was … and when it finally stopped, I think the dog was maybe thinking twice. But at that moment, the [dog’s owner] was already reversing, and I think he was already out of his car about the time the two dogs faced off.”
Lyons says the German shepherd had strong recall and returned to its owner immediately upon hearing a command. He says one witness claimed that the dog bit the wolf at one point, and because of where Lyons was standing in relation to the canines, he couldn’t see every second of the action.
“But I don’t think that happened,” he explains. “I don’t recall hearing any vocalization by the dog or the wolf — like a ‘yip’ or anything like that.”
The owner and operator of Yellowstone Insight, a private tour company based in Gardiner, Lyons says the chase took place in the interior of the park on a road south of Canyon Village. His Facebook post that included the photographs has gotten plenty of attention on social media, with more than 7,000 comments pouring in over the weekend. Many commenters have chastised the dog’s owner for being negligent.
The man has also received several citations from the National Park Service, according to Lyons, a former Yellowstone park ranger himself. He says the dog owner, who was driving a Jeep with Florida plates, is due in court sometime in July.
But Lyons also thinks some of the online negativity has been misplaced — especially after speaking with the dog’s owner, who called him Sunday to apologize and explain what happened. Lyons says that after hearing these details, he believes it was an honest accident, and he blames a lot of the chaos on some of the other onlookers, who were running toward the chase with their phones and cameras to get a closer look at the fleeing wolf. At one point, he says, he almost got in a physical altercation with a man who he told to return to his vehicle.
Lyons also clarifies that dogs are allowed in Yellowstone’s developed areas, such as on major roads. There are, however, some strict regulations around pets in the national park, and it’s the owner’s responsibility to keep their pet under control (in a car, in a crate, or on a leash) at all times.
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“The [dog owner] did the best he possibly could in the scenario,” Lyons says, “and he feels really horrible about this.”
The scenario involved a yearling wolf that was scavenging a carcass near the roadway. Lyons says he’s familiar with the yearling’s pack, which lives in the heart of Yellowstone and has never left the park’s boundaries to his knowledge. Lyons and his tour group had seen the young wolf as they drove past, and then he saw the Jeep with Florida plates as it passed them heading the other direction. He can’t remember seeing the dog, which leapt out of the back window on the driver’s side and took off running.
“This gentleman assessed the situation, saw what was going on, and here’s the new, important piece of the puzzle — he did roll the vehicle’s window up, but it was a brand-new vehicle to him, a 2024 Jeep,” Lyons explains. “And it has this child-safety mechanism so that when the window hits something, it goes all the way back down … Well, what he didn’t know was that the three-year-old German shepherd had put its nose out, and the window immediately retracted behind him without him ever realizing it.”
Lyons says that upon seeing what happened, the driver immediately threw his Jeep into reverse and raced backwards to stop his dog.
Other eyewitnesses might have told a slightly different story, Lyons explains. And because there were no park rangers or other law enforcement present at the time, NPS officials have so far been working off word-of-mouth. The agency did respond immediately to a request for comment Monday, and there is no official press release surrounding the incident.
Lyons declined to share the name of the dog’s owner, who he said was “a big wildlife advocate” and had been recognized for his volunteer conservation work in Florida. The man now apparently works in the Yellowstone area and is afraid of getting even more backlash for Friday’s incident. He told Lyons that NPS officials are “stacking citations” on him, and he’s currently considering whether or not to hire a lawyer for his upcoming court case.
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