Seemingly unaware of the danger lurking behind him, a medium-sized black dog with tan legs, sad eyes and no collar trotted up a dusty dirt road in this hardscrabble community outside Gallup near the southeast corner of the sprawling Navajo Nation.

In a flash, a pack of seven other free-roaming, mixed-breed dogs — no collars, either — scurried up the same road.

Moments later, bursts of snarling, growling, barking and yelping exploded over a residential area after one of the dogs in the pack lunged at the lone canine, unleashing a ferocious attack that ended with all the dogs fleeing in different directions.

This beastly, stop-you-in-your-tracks scene is not unusual in this community, one of many within the Navajo Nation where so-called rez dogs roam unchecked.

Here on the reservation, the largest in the United States, man’s best friend has become one of its biggest foes.

By some estimates, 250,000 stray and neglected dogs roam the Navajo Nation — and they’re killing and maiming as they stray into neighboring communities.

“It is literally the wild, wild West,” said Tiffany Hubbard, a Texas-born animal control officer who works for the city of Gallup. “I grew up in a big city, and this is a whole ’nother ballgame.”

The dogs have become not just a nuisance but a major public safety concern.

Attacks on livestock occur regularly. So do attacks on people — sometimes with deadly results.

Last month, 13-year-old Lyssa Rose Upshaw went for a walk before dinner in Fort Defiance, Ariz., and never made it back home.

Though the investigation is still underway, the teenager is believed to have been fatally mauled by about a dozen dogs belonging to a neighbor, her mother’s cousin.

“She had no skin on her legs,” Marissa Jones, 42, recalled about seeing her lifeless daughter on the ground.

“They chewed her legs,” Jones said, sobbing. “She was gone.”

Emergency action

Lyssa Rose was a sweet, quiet girl looking forward to becoming a freshman in high school and joining the track and cross-country teams, along with her 17-yearold brother, Evan Upshaw, who will be a senior.

“She was excited to be in high school her first year with her brother,” Jones said.

Instead, Lyssa Rose was buried May 25, the latest casualty linked to an overpopulation of dogs on the reservation.

“We’ve had a total of six deaths involving dog packs,” Animal Control Manager Kevin Gleason told the Navajo Nation Council’s Law and Order Committee on May 24.

Other victims include an 8-year-old boy killed in 2012 and a 3-year-old boy fatally mauled in 2016.

“The dog population is just too large for [the Navajo Nation], and people are just not being responsible for their pets,” Gleason told tribal officials.

Gleason did not return messages seeking comment. But he told the council committee, which discussed how to strengthen its animal control laws after the girl’s tragic death, that all violations are civil and carry a maximum $500 fine.

“None of the laws hold dog owners responsible [if their dog] kills somebody,”

he said. “But also, we’ve had several incidents on [the reservation] where dog attacks had severely mauled people where they lost limbs and stuff. Ears, arms.”

Each year, more than 3,000 people are treated for animal attacks and bites that happened on the reservation. Most of the victims are children or the elderly.

Earlier this month, the Navajo Nation Council took emergency action and established criminal penalties for vicious dog attacks.

The emergency legislation would make it a criminal nuisance for an owner “to allow a dog to run at large if that dog injures or kills someone.” The measure allows animal control officers the authority to destroy dogs that run at large and are deemed a danger. The legislation also calls for penalties of a minimum of 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine for each offense, and it requires dog owners to pay $3,000 for a victim’s funeral expenses.

Jones, Lyssa Rose’s mother, doesn’t believe the proposed law goes far enough. Thirty days in jail and a $1,000 fine doesn’t seem like justice, she said.

“I have [had] several people come to me and tell me they’ve been attacked by those dogs,” she said, referring to the pack in her daughter’s suspected mauling.

“My niece has been attacked the exact same way. She went jogging up there, and she got cornered,” Jones said.

But her niece’s screams drew the attention of Jones’ cousin, who went outside to see what the commotion was about, preventing an attack, Jones said.

“This was up on the hill. My daughter was down below,” she said. “If those dogs came down and attacked my daughter down below, and she was screaming or fighting for her life, they didn’t hear her! Nobody heard her!”

Jared Touchin, a spokesman for the Navajo Nation, wrote in an email that President Jonathan Nez had until Friday “to take action on a legislation that addresses dog attacks on the Navajo Nation.” Touchin did not respond to a follow-up request for comment.

Michael Henderson, director of the Navajo Nation’s Criminal Investigations Unit, didn’t return a message seeking comment, either, but told the Law and Order Committee last month police have investigated multiple dog attacks resulting in death.

“Two that we know of so far are involving individuals where they became inebriated out in the public,” he said. “When they passed out from inebriation, they were attacked by the dogs, by a pack of dogs, and died as a result.”

Huge territory, little manpower

It’s not just a dog problem, officials say.

The reservation is also grappling with a staffing shortage.

Gleason, the head of animal control, told the committee last month there are more than 100 communities on the Navajo Nation but only five animal control officers. The reservation encompasses more than 27,000 square miles and stretches into three states: northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.

“The big issue is we don’t have the staff to efficiently be proactive with animal control,” Gleason said. “Right now, we’re being reactive to whatever calls we’re getting.”

As of last month, they had handled 280 bite cases and an equal number of cases involving vicious animals, Gleason said. More than 10,000 animals had been impounded at that time, he said.

The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the dog problem on the reservation, one of the hardest-hit areas in the United States, according to animal control officers and the Navajo Nation Council’s emergency legislation.

Over the past 18 months, enforcement of animal control laws has nearly ground to a halt as several animal control facilities were forced to close and spaying and neutering services were cut back drastically. The combination “resulted in an unprecedented number of dogs running at large on the Navajo Nation,” according to the resolution calling for stiffer penalties.

Last week, a small team of animal control officers and others descended on Sundance for an “animal sweep” and captured multiple dogs, including at least two that were part of the fight on the dusty dirt road.

Among their tools: cages, trapline steel catch poles and ropes to lasso the dogs.

“Our last resort is to euthanize out in the field,” said Gregory Pahe, one of the animal control officers. “That’s usually with the rifle.”

Pahe, 37, said he covers a large area with a lot of open space and dogs that tend to attack livestock.

“A lot of times, these dogs live out in the hills, in the canyons, so they don’t know any other way except to be feral,” he said.

Jimmy Begay, who lives in the Sundance community, said he’s been feeding dogs that just showed up at his doorstep and never left. He said he didn’t really like the dogs and was relieved when animal control officers hauled them away. The only one he kept was a Chihuahua belonging to his daughter.

“There’s just dogs everywhere,” he said. “They just let them roam around and then they start breeding one another, and it just keeps accumulating.”

Begay said he’s contacted animal control in the past about the large number of free-roaming dogs in Sundance, but they never responded. He said the death of Lyssa Rose last month likely prompted the agency to beef up its enforcement efforts.

“That should have never happened,” he said, referring to the apparent mauling death. “By law, every dog has to be tied up, especially if they’re vicious. … But I don’t see people having [licenses] and stuff like that. They let the dogs roam around, especially those vicious dogs like pit bulls.”

Pahe said residents are prohibited from owning more than four animals, whether it be cats or dogs.

“The dog has to be restrained,” he said. “If it’s inside a fenced-in area and the fence is suitable, which means a dog can’t get out, then the dogs can run around in that space, so it’s either restrained or confined. Or, sometimes it’s even both if the fences are kind of shoddy.”

In the Sundance community, fences are few and far between, and by the looks of it, the four-dog limit is ignored.

But the large animal population isn’t limited to Sundance.

“I think the most I ever removed from one house was probably like 32 cats and dogs,” Pahe said.

In 2011, a Navajo official estimated there were four to five dogs for each household on the reservation, or as many as 445,000 dogs total, according to the Seattle Times.

Pahe said some estimates peg the number even higher.

“Every once in a great while, you’ll see coydogs,” he said. “That’s dogs that have mated with coyotes.”

Beyond the reservation

The problem is spilling into neighboring unincorporated areas and municipalities.

“We’ve got several packs of wild dogs that have been coming in from tribal areas to the city [of Gallup] or into [McKinley County] and what they’re doing is they’re packing up and they’re chasing people that are riding bikes or that are walking the trails,” said Hubbard, the city animal control officer.

“When we go out there, they run back to tribal lands, so we can’t even get close enough to try to catch them, track them, tranquilize them, anything,” she added. “We’re talking a pack of six to 10 dogs.”

As is true on the Navajo Nation, Hubbard’s dog-catching operation is also short-staffed. But someone is always on call, she said.

“We’re trying to avoid a tragedy,” she said. “We don’t want anybody to get hurt or killed, you know, and there’s only two of us for the entire city of Gallup and McKinley County, so we’re kind of a skeleton crew right now.”

Hubbard said her agency receives calls for help from the Navajo Nation.

“We have to explain to them we have no jurisdiction,” she said, referring to the tribe’s sovereignty. “When we have room, we take in animals from the reservation — puppies, kittens, mommas and puppies. I mean, it’s overwhelming because due to COVID, there were no spay and neuter services for several months. That is why there is such an explosion of dogs and cats everywhere.”

New Mexico state Rep. Anthony Allison, D-Fruitland and a member of the Legislature’s Indian Affairs Committee, said the overpopulation of dogs is part of a vicious cycle.

“When people do get a litter of puppies, they load them up and then they dump them out elsewhere,” he said. “For example, there might be a home right in the middle of the rez where there’s nobody around for miles and miles. They just load up the litter and take it to one of the smaller villages where there is an abundance of houses, hoping that the people will take in some of the puppies. That’s what happens.”

Allison, who is Navajo and has family living on the reservation, said the Navajo Nation needs to address the problem. He said he’s looking into how the state of New Mexico might be able to help. “A stray dog is a problem everywhere,” he said. Hubbard agreed, saying the drought has pushed the dogs farther away from the reservation.

“They’re coming in where there’s water, where there’s food,” she said. “There’s nothing out there. … The problem has gotten so out of control on the reservation side that they’re moving into our side.”

While education and spay and neuter services will be crucial to controlling the situation, Hubbard said the Navajo Nation and local governments need to direct more funding toward animal control.

“It doesn’t pop into people’s heads until something bad happens that they need to help these guys out and give them the funding, give them the tools that they need to do their job,” she said. “It’s sad that it has to take — this is the six death due to dogs — and it takes that many for it to kick into people’s heads like, ‘Oh, we should do something about it.’ That’s what’s frustrating more than anything.”

Pleading for action

Animal shelters and even individuals acting on their own have pitched in to rescue stray dogs.

“You try to find homes for all the animals that come into the shelters,” Pahe said.

But that doesn’t always happen.

Mary Martin, animal care director for the Utahbased Best Friends Animal Society and former executive director of the Santa Fe Animal Shelter & Humane Society, said the effort to save animals is relentless. She said Best Friends had generally been traveling to the reservation’s six animal control facilities on Thursdays.

“Because on Friday, if the animals aren’t out of those [facilities], they’re euthanized. Period,” she said. “Either you come get them or they get killed. End of story.”

Best Friends has been making fewer trips lately, Martin said.

“We’ve run out of places to send them,” she said about the animals, adding that shelters and rescue organizations tend to fill up every summer.

Colorado-based Soul Dog Rescue is also trying to save lives. Its mission started with helping dogs and cats on tribal lands in the Four Corners region.

“Rescue was happening on a small scale by some hearty groups who had been doing what they could, but what was really needed was a proactive approach and a means to eliminate the unwanted litters of puppies and kittens being born at staggering numbers,” according to its website.

The organization also provides spay and neuter services.

“If you stop and ease up for even a year, all of your work is undone and you are back to square one,” the website states.

During the Navajo Nation Council’s Law and Order Committee meeting last month, which was conducted over the telephone, a woman tearfully told tribal officials her young son had been killed by a pack of dogs on the reservation July 14, 2016. According to published reports, five dogs mauled 3-year-old Kayden Colter Begay that day in Seba Dalkai, Ariz., which is near the New Mexico border.

“It’s affected us in so many ways that to this day, it’s hard to breathe and find comfort,” she said.

The woman said she was at work when she was informed of her son’s death.

“Citations were the only thing given, but citations [are] not enough to bring my son back,” the woman said, crying. “Citations don’t help heal my heart.”

An investigator deemed her son’s dog mauling death an accident, which she said broke her heart “all over again.”

“Please, I’m begging, please, please do something about this,” the woman told tribal officials.

As the woman shared her heart-wrenching story, a dog could be heard barking and howling in the background.