On June 30, I worked in the garden hilling my potatoes and chopping away at chickweed. As I chopped away at the weeds, I thought of my Uncle Perry and how he kept a garden even after he turned 90. So, as I groaned when I straightened up, I was stern with myself. I didn't listen to the voice that said maybe, at 72, I was old enough to let up on some of this physical stuff.

Because of all my physical labor, I felt more tired than usual that night. I read until a little after midnight, then switched off the reading lamp and slept. I was sleeping well and hard, dreaming some crazy dream, when the dogs' barking awoke me. Oh, dumb dogs. The neighbors don't want to listen to that and neither do I. I forced myself up, went to the window and yelled, "Quiet, Perry. Quiet, Peggy. Quiet, now." The dogs quieted for a moment.

I went back to bed, but not for long. The dogs' barking resumed. I went to the window again, opened it and yelled at them once more. This time Perry and Peggy didn't quiet, but kept barking insistently, adamantly. I could hear Patty, over by the greenhouse, barking too, and farther off, I thought I heard another bark.

Wonder if another dog is out there, I thought. Or something else -- probably that moose that's been coming around. Guess I'll get out the pan lids. Something's out there for sure, and those dogs will never shut up 'til it's gone.

I looked at the clock. It was 12:48 a.m. The summer solstice had come a couple of hours earlier. I went downstairs, opened the lid drawer under my stove and got out two large pan lids. By this time Perry and Peggy's barking was frantic. It didn't sound the way it did when a moose was out there. Maybe there is another dog around, although that would be unusual, especially this time of night.

I opened the door to the dog deck and looked out. Although it was almost 1 a.m., it was the summer solstice, and I could see in the dusky light. At first I could see nothing to provoke such barking. Then I looked for the dogs. They always face toward whatever they were barking at.

That's when I saw it.

Right next to the dog pen, keeping pace with Perry and Peggy, was a brown bear. Peggy and Perry were barking harder than I'd ever heard them bark. If they intended to give the bear notice that this was their territory, the bear wasn't put off. It stayed even with the dogs, just outside the fence, no more than a yard beyond them. I moved into action.

I started banging the pan lids for all they were worth and yelling, "Get away. Go on, now. Scram. Get away, you."

The bear wasn't daunted, but it did mosey around to the end of the pen. Oh no, I thought. I'm chasing it toward Patty.

Patty was chained on the opposite side of my backyard and had no protecting fence around her. I had to waylay that bear -- fast. I grabbed a leash, put on some shoes, and dashed out the front door with my pan lids.

By this time, the bear was standing in the middle of my garden. He stared at me, a bemused expression on his face. As I moved toward frantic Patty, who by now had her chain wrapped around her doghouse so that she could hardly move, I banged away with my pan lids and kept yelling at the bear. "Go on now. Get. Go away."

The bear continued to stare, no doubt astonished at this foreign creature making so much noise. Then he turned and ambled to the far side of the garden. I rushed over to Patty, worked to calm her bucking enough to snap the leash on her, then unsnapped the chain and hurried her to the shed, where I shut her up for the night.

With one dog safe, I went back in the house and opened the door to let Perry and Peggy inside, but for once they didn't bound in, eager to be petted. They were still doing guard duty. Perry wouldn't come in at all, and Peggy came in for a few agitated seconds, then wanted back outside. Those dogs still had a bear to tend to.

As I returned to my bed, I heard them woof a few more times. Then the night was still. That bear wasn't afraid of my dogs, but a yelling demon with clanging pan lids made him reconsider. He didn't stick around for a fine doggie feast.

The next morning I went out to my garden to see what damage the bear had done and to look for tracks. I didn't see any broken plants, and only in the looser dirt where I had hilled my potatoes did I see tracks. In one depression, I could see three toe pad prints. I measured the paw print. It was 10 1/2 inches in length. I measured another depression. It was 11 1/4 inches long. I don't know how much the loose dirt in the hilling I had done distorted the actual length.

And I don't know for sure it was a brown bear I saw. It looked brown in that dusky light, but it certainly wasn't afraid of either the dogs or me. (Now those clanging pan lids were another matter.)

I looked in "Murie's Field Guide to Animal Tracks." Murie said bear print sizes vary according to sex, age, individual variation and type of ground. He gave the length of a brown bear's hind foot track as 16 inches, a grizzly's as 10 inches, and a black bear's as 7 inches. So there you have it -- the tale of my dogs' frenzied summer solstice confrontation. I trust their little hearts withstood the strain.

And if they ever meet a bear without a fence between them and it, I hope they don't try to give it their come-uppance.

But let me give my rascals the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that wasn't what they were trying to do. Maybe they -- oh valiant watchdogs -- were bent on alerting me and my neighbors, who were trying to shut out their barking din and sleep, that a bear -- a potential marauder -- had invaded the neighborhood.

Betty Jo Goddard has lived at her ridge-top home near Epperson Knob between Homer and Anchor Point since 1995. Since then, she writes, she's added fullness to her life by acquiring her errant dogs and joining a writers' group in Homer.

"My dogs alert me when alien critters are about. In addition to the bold brown bear, they have let me know about these visitors: two black bear, two wolves, moose too numerous to count, and, yesterday, some magpies who wished to lay waste to my garden. My dogs put a stop to that. I also have seen a lynx and two coyote up here, though I can't give my dogs credit for those sightings."