Grizzlies Charm Trainer; That’s Bear-Faced Truth

HEBER CITY, Utah —  Doug Seus hops around in his backyard, surrounded on all sides by his past, future and present.

Buried at the bottom of a grassy slope behind him lies Bart the Bear. Star of more than a dozen feature films and a slew of commercials and documentaries, Bart died May 10 at the age of 23 after battling cancer for almost two years.

Across the driveway are Little Bart and his yet-to-be-named sister, in separate cages, eager for attention. The two 5-month-old grizzly cubs were orphaned in Alaska when their mother was shot and killed last month.

Directly in front of the rugged 57-year-old Seus is Tank, his star of the moment. Doug is in the middle of negotiating a contract that could land the 5-year-old the lead role in the sequel to the 1998 film “Dr. Dolittle.”

On a warm spring day at his and wife Lynn’s five-acre property on the outskirts of town, Seus has Tank’s full attention.

“Peek-a-boo!” Seus says to the seven-foot-plus, 700-pound grizzly, who complies by putting his skillet-sized mitts over his eyes.

“Say your prayers!” Seus instructs the nondenominational creature, who almost looks reverent as he clasps his giant paws together in front of him.

“Good boy, Tank! Somersault!”

Somehow the bear manages to incorporate both lumbering and grace into this front roll, his shoulder softly initiating contact with the ground before he pops back up on his hind legs.

Tank is rewarded with a handful of apples and an emphatic chorus of “Gooood booooys.” After a few more tricks and a photo op with his human family, he is escorted back into his pen.

It’s a little different these days around the Seuses’ Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife Ranch, about 30 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

Handling Bears Full-Time Pursuit

Old Reliable’s gone, but between Tank and the two unpredictable kids, the Seuses expect to have their hands full for a long time.

“We’re consumed,” Seus says one evening around 7 p.m. from the ranch. “I just got in, and I’ll be back out before dark and up with them again around 7 a.m.”

All day, every day.

Seus and his wife don’t travel, don’t go out much. The bears take up most of their time.

A native of Pennsylvania, Seus came to Utah in 1966. “The West called me,” he says. He didn’t immediately jump into animal training. Then 24, he took mostly construction and other odd jobs his first few years, but was always happiest hiking and observing wildlife.

He began training bears in 1978 when he adopted Bart, a Kodiak brown bear, from a Baltimore zoo. He had trained other wild animals, including wolves and skunks, but fell in love with bears. He knew he immediately had found his life’s passion.

“I wouldn’t want to do anything else,” Seus says.

With Tank now moving into the spotlight and the cubs needing constant attention, there’s no end in sight for Seus’s work.

Tank should live to be about 30, as should the cubs. If they do, that would put Doug at a very ripe 87. An 87-year-old bear trainer?

“You betcha,” Seus says, laughing at the image of himself surrounded in senility by his “little friends.”

“I’m just so enthralled. I could sit for hours on end just watching them. It doesn’t ever diminish.”

Seus says the key to his job is developing trust with the animal.

“Everything is built on honesty, trust,” he says. “All their emotions are true, they can’t disguise them. Even if a bear is being deceitful, they’re honest in their deceit.”

Making Creatures of Routine Adapt

He spends most of his time, especially with the young ones, preparing them for new experiences, new environments. He feeds them at different times, walks them at different times and alternates which one he’ll stroke to sleep first every night. They’re creatures of routine, and to adapt to domestication and lives in which they’ll be surrounded by humans, they need to be exposed to variety and trained to accept change.

“You teach them that a break in routine is not threatening, that it can be coped with,” Seus says. “Then they’re safer animals.”

Seus says he’s never had any close calls with any of his bears, no time when he thought he or anyone else might be in danger of being harmed. He isn’t a large man, but after a look at his forearms it’s not surprising that he plays with bears all day. He looks as if he could change a tire without using a lug wrench. Or a jack.

Yet it’s these scratched-up, well-muscled arms that coddle and caress the two new cubs as they adjust from the wild Alaska interior to life on the Seuses’ ranch.

There’s still a hole in Seus’s heart where Bart used to live, but with the new cubs on the ranch, there’s plenty to do to fill that void. And Little Bart, Seus says, has already made a big impression on him and Lynn.

The Legacy of Bart Lives On

“We weren’t going to name him Bart,” Seus says. “We didn’t plan that at all, but . . . the precociousness, the confidence, the naughtiness . . . all of that is [big] Bart’s personality.”

Seus stands outside a larger pen that he puts the two cubs in so they can play together. They chase each other around, from the hay bales in one corner, where they tackle each other, and back to the other corner where the plastic kiddie pool sits filled with water. Little Bart jumps in at full speed, splashing water everywhere. His little sister is close behind. As she hits the water, Bart is already scampering back toward the hay bales, his wet paws smacking loudly on the cement.

Doug Seus is watching them, laughing. He couldn’t imagine himself doing anything else.