CT: Aggressive bear sought after it mauled dog in Torrington yard

CT: Aggressive bear sought after it mauled dog in Torrington yard

BY BRIGITTE RUTHMAN | REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

Brenda Green of Torrington with her dog Shelby outside their Sage Way home on Saturday near the indoor/outdoor enclosure that Shelby and Rolls, one of Shelby's pups, were attacked by a bear last month. Rolls' injuries were so servere that the family had him euthanized. Jim Shannon / Republican-American

TORRINGTON — Wanted: Dog-mauling bear. Aggressive. May currently be hiding in hibernation. State biologists have since late November been attempting to find and trap a bear that mauled a dog in a rural neighborhood in the city's east end, about a half-mile north of Greenwoods Country Club.

What they suspect could be the same bear also fearlessly pushed on windows and doors on a home, in what seemed an attempt to get inside, about the same time.

On Nov. 22, Brenda and Tim Green arrived home from church to find two neighborhood children and their 7-year-old son on the front porch. The children said they were afraid to play in the yard, because they had heard strange noises.  "We thought we had been talking so much about bears that we had spooked them," Brenda Green said.

Within the previous two days, a bear had wandered to the back door of the CSI Sageway Group Home, a nursing and personal care facility next door at 115 Sageway. It had placed its paws on a glass door in what seemed to residents to be an attempt to push its way inside, said Gail Palmer, a supervisor at the residential home.

By then, Green had seen a large black bear three times in her yard.  It wasn't until later that afternoon of Nov. 22 that the Greens realized they hadn't seen their young cockapoo dog, Rolls Royce, emerge from a small shelter enclosed by a three-foot-tall fence in their backyard. They noticed that part of the fence was damaged.

"Usually, Rolls comes right out," Green said. "My husband went to pick him up and said there was something wrong. He was limp, and couldn't move. His spine had been broken."

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