When a wolf seizes you by the throat.....keep calm!

[British Red]

With a wolf’s jaws clamped around her neck, Dawn Hepp survived by just keeping calm

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...neck-dawn-hepp-survived-by-just-keeping-calm/

Dawn Hepp grew up on a farm in Manitoba, with pigs and cattle and chickens and with Wayne, her father, dispensing sage advice and wisdom about dealing with animals.
Pigs, if you didn’t already know, are, when the mood strikes, prone to charge. Wayne’s lesson to his daughter in the event of an encounter with an ornery sow was to stay calm. Don’t panic. Never run. Simply step aside and let piggy charge on by. Cattle, especially when calving, can get agitated, and the surest way to soothe their nerves and avoid being kicked, butted or otherwise knocked flat, is to stay calm. Calmness, for farm girls, is a commandment.
And staying calm was what Dawn Hepp, now a medical secretary in Thompson, Manitoba, kept telling herself to do on March 8 when a large and presumably hungry timber wolf pounced, locking its jaws around her neck on a lonely stretch of highway near Grand Rapids, about 400 km north of Winnipeg.

(continues with photos at the link)

That lady must have ice water in her veins

What a brave woman, with a fantastic attitude - someone who deserves a little recognition!

 

[Ogri the trog]

One very courageous individual!

Ogri the trog

 

[Stringmaker]

The kind of person you want to be with in a crisis.

 

[mrcharly]

Presumably not struggling is a bit like the 'I submit' signal that dogs use. If you see dogs or cats fighting each other, if one seizes the other by a throat then the fight stops as soon as the one seized stops struggling.

The keep calm advice is pretty good but don't follow it if a stallion charges you. Either gtfo or scream shout and slap it on the nose.

 

[Stringmaker]

It might be a similar thing to scruffing a cat; I know you aren't supposed to do it to adults but the animal goes limp and submissive.

Maybe the wolf thought he'd got dinner sorted, his problem was going to be transporting it back home!

 

[Elen Sentier]

Presumably not struggling is a bit like the 'I submit' signal that dogs use. If you see dogs or cats fighting each other, if one seizes the other by a throat then the fight stops as soon as the one seized stops struggling.

Remembering what Shaun Ellis says, not struggling is exactly that - submission and showing you see the other wolf as your superior.

It might be a similar thing to scruffing a cat; I know you aren't supposed to do it to adults but the animal goes limp and submissive.

Scruffing cats has a similar effect. You shouldn't pick larger/older cats up that way unless you absolutley have to, their lungs and guts hang down and they can suffocate, you always should hold a cat under their butt to make sure this doesn't happen, never "dangle" them! Holding them down by the scruff will make them still and stop. - I am alpha-cat for that time. It doesn't last, of course, I assume my role as "staff" pretty soon after any tellings off . I imagine scruffing people might work too ... which is likely what the wolf did.

 

[daveO]

“He dug deeper with his teeth,” Ms. Hepp says. “I had my coat on, and so when he went to get a better grip he let go — and then I gave him a look.”

That must have been a hell of a look. I bet her husband read that and felt sorry for the wolf.

 

[mayobren]

Good story.......keep calm and carry on

 

[Mad Mike]

That must have been a hell of a look. I bet her husband read that and felt sorry for the wolf.

I know I do

 

[British Red]

Sadly I have heard the story has been discredited and she was in fact feeding a sick wolf when it attacked.

 

[luckylee]

woww, what a brave lady indeed.

 

[Dave]

Sadly I have heard the story has been discredited and she was in fact feeding a sick wolf when it attacked.

That makes more sense. I dont know what the statistics are on Wolves killing humans, but its extremely rare.

Programs like the recent Yukon Men dont help.

I think it was in the fist episode, where the narrator claimed that something like twenty people had been killed in the last ten years.

Just a complete lie.

 

[Hugo]

Did the wolf survive OK.

 

[THOaken]

Shaun Ellis' and this woman both seem to have it figured that not struggling is the same as submission, but to my ignorant mind I'm wondering one question: wouldn't not fighting back make it easier for the wolf to dominate the prey? Surely then the superior wolf would feel like he's in control?

I admire that woman because she understands that the wolf was just acting according to its nature and even expressed concern for the wolf.