I have heard stories about peoples dogs being ate by alligators but never knew anyone personally that has had it happen to them. I gained access to a swamp that is absolutely full of them. How bad are they about grabbing dogs. Is it more or less the dogs runs up on the gator and it gets them or do they go after them if they see them ? If they do get a dog, is there any hope of saving your dog ?
Lee
I am from Polk County Florida originally. There are gators everywhere down there where we used to hunt at River Ranch and Avon Park Bombing Range....and other swamps we used to hunt. We have had a few dogs come up missing never to be seen again....and we just figured it was a gator.....those people that move down to Central Florida with their little lap dogs...they get eaten a lot at those canals that run through the retirement communities. Here is a story out of Santa Rosa County Florida (Crestview/Pensacola area). This is out of the Alabama Game and Fish Magazine. I remember reading this in the Tallahassee Newspaper in 1995.
Alligator Attacks!
One thing that alligators do quite often is kill dogs. Some breeds like Labrador retrievers love the water, and in fact, more Labs are killed by hungry gators than any other breed. However, no dog that goes near a big gator is safe.
All you have to do is consider the story of Flojo, a prized purebred Walker hunting dog belonging to Rufus Godwin of Chumuckla in Santa Rosa County. Godwin fox hunted with Flojo during the summer of 1995 in the Blackwater River State Forest. Flojo wore an electronic tracking collar, but one night the signal stopped and the dog seemed to vanish into thin air.
A few days later, Godwin returned to the same area and picked up the faint signal of Flojo's collar. He and a friend followed the signal down the side of a hill and through the underbrush to Coldwater Creek, then across to a small oxbow lake.
"When we walked up to the little lake and turned on the receiver, it went wild beeping. That's when I knew an alligator had her," he said.
The next day, Godwin, his son and two gator trappers went back and pulled an old bull gator from the lake. When the 10-foot, 11-inch gator was pulled from the water, they found it had not only eaten Godwin's dog, but the gator's stomach contained pieces and parts of six other dog collars, including one collar from a dog that had been missing for 14 years. An estimated 25 dogs had disappeared from that section of the forest over the years; most of them were thought to have been stolen.
One thing that sent a chill through everyone was the dog-eating gator lived its life only one-fourth mile down the creek from a popular swimming area. However, no one had ever reported seeing the gator. It apparently had remained hidden until barking dogs signaled feeding time
