FLORENCE - This is nothing new for Carrie Hunt.

She knows she's got a good thing going with her trained Karelian bear dogs, a proven cutting-edge tool in wildlife predator management. By now, wildlife managers in Montana and a lot of other places know it, too.

But as recently as three days ago, Hunt was literally on her knees praying for money enough to keep the good thing going.

In January, Hunt cut her staff in half at the Wind River Bear Institute, a 120-acre ranch just off U.S. Highway 93 on East Carlton Creek Road. In March, she was in Washington, D.C., bear dog in tow, to talk to Montana's congressmen about stimulus funding for the institute. Two weeks ago, Hunt swallowed her pride and asked family to help her meet the next payroll.

And on Saturday, she and Renee Van Camp, the bear institute's kennel manager, opened the ranch to other people's dogs.

"Our dogs enjoy this every day," Van Camp said, guiding a visitor through the spacious pens and heated barns during an open house at Wind River Tails and Trails. "They love being here. They have a lot of space and we want to offer that to everybody else's dogs, from the littlest chihuahuas to the biggest Great Danes."

A steady stream of friends and potential customers kept Hunt and her helpers hopping at the open house. Dog day care, fun walks and training the Wind River way will be offered as the institute struggles to survive the recession. Dogs can be separated by size and age in three large grassy paddocks, each of which provide easy access to a homey barn lined with doggie cots of various sizes.

"They say where your pain is is where you should be going with your life," Hunt said. "I know this is where we're supposed to go next with this program."

Hunt, 55, has made it not only her career but her passion to reduce conflicts between humans and grizzly bears and other beasts of the wild without anyone getting hurt. She pioneered the use of bear spray and rubber bullets.

By the mid-1990s she had discovered Karelians, a breed of dog ideally suited for bear "shepherding." Hunt set about convincing others in the wildlife management world of the same.

"This is cutting edge," she said. "We were nine years ahead of our time before anyone else started doing it."

She launched the program in Utah on a shoestring budget.

"I was living in my brother's basement with three dogs and a cat," Hunt said. "My mother and father staked me to two years of food, vehicle, gas and rent."

She moved the institute to Montana in 2005, to be next door to grizzly country. Today there are more than 100 Wind River Bear Institute-trained Karelians in the United States, Canada and Japan.

"We have changed how wildlife managers are dealing with wildlife," Hunt said, with pride.

It's the time of years for bears to den up, often an anxious and busy time for human conflicts. Hunt and a few of her dogs are just finishing a shepherding project on the Rocky Mountain Front. Once winter hits, there's not a lot of work, Hunt said, but the bills must still be paid.

The idea for a dog day care and training facility came in what Hunt described as an epiphany. She was having a late-night chat with her 9-year-old niece. Her message to schoolchildren who come to visit the institute is one of finding a dream and pursuing it, no matter what it takes.

"I said to my niece I was born to help animals and people get along better, and she said, 'I know, Aunt Carrie. Look how you helped us with our dogs.'

"I went, oh my gosh, that's what we should be doing. We should be offering day care and boarding and training to the public. We have these unbelievable yards. We're on this ranch. Why not?"

Her dream, she said, is to give more people in the Bitterroot, Missoula and across the U.S. the tools to deal with wildlife and humans the way she and her Karelians do. She hopes the new dogs and their owners become ambassadors for the institute and its primary work.

Hunt and her dogs have proved their worth in reducing human and bear conflicts in the likes of Glacier and Yosemite national parks, the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon, the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana, the Canadian Rockies in western Alberta, and even in Japan, parts of which face a big black bear problem.

But the state and federal agencies that call on her to do it face their own budget crunches. Glacier Park, the scene of some of the most successful bear dog interventions, has quit calling altogether.

"Our biggest stumbling block is funding. It's what's putting the gray hairs in my head," said Hunt.

She'd like to secure government contracts instead of working on an on-call basis with agencies such as Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. The nonprofit relies almost totally on private donations and Hunt rues the idea of spending more of her time writing grant applications than working with the dogs.

But she's not going under, Hunt stressed.

A half hour after she got on her knees and prayed for help last week, she got a call from the wildlife agency in Alberta, with whom she's been working for years. They asked for a price quote for a formal training program of dogs and their handlers like the police use.

"Now they now have to see if they can pull it off," Hunt said. "We need $30,000 to $40,000 to make it to the end of the year, and if that happens we just might make it."

Soon after, she got a call from Washington state officials. They'd just gained approval to buy one more bear dog from Wind River, and may be in the market for more.

"Montana, even though they've had to curtail any expansion in the program, has allowed us into the Bitterroot," Hunt said. The institute has been asked to help the valley bear proof itself.

"It's our first request from officers in Montana to help and to try to do non-lethal bear shepherding on black bears," she said excitedly.

Her trip to Washington, D.C., last spring bore little tangible fruit, but Hunt is not deterred. She plans to meet with Gov. Brian Schweitzer soon, and with Sen. Jon Tester when he's back in Montana.

"We can help with wolf work, we can help with bear work, and we're proven," Hunt said. "Why are just the big agencies and organizations that are flashy getting the money, when we're the on-the-ground group that has been proven to work? We're just not politically connected."

She also wants to sit down and talk with Tom Siebel, the wealthy Montana landowner who created the Montana Meth Project. With his help, Hunt would like to get kids who are in drug rehabilitation programs involved in training the dogs that help rehabilitate problem wildlife.

"He got a massive thing done, and he wasn't afraid to think big," Hunt said. "I think with his ranching interest, his interest in animals and his interest in kids we have parallel interests."

Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@

missoulian.com.