Bear Pushes Injured Trainer Around in Wheelchair

A bear pushing a man around in a wheelchair isn’t the first thing you’d expect to see on the streets of Moscow, but that is exactly what Yasha the Bear was doing on Tuesday.

Trainer Oleg Aleksandrov had an accident at Nizhegorodsky Circus, falling 18 metres from the central dome, breaking both legs and an arm. He was raising three baby bears at the time.

"They were tiny back then and we bought up all the children’s food in the shops because that’s what they ate. We fed them from a bottle and raised them since then," Oleg said. However, following the accident, Oleg was hospitalised and taken away from his bears or "hairy children" as he calls them for four months.

"I was very worried about how our relationship would change," he said, adding "this thought was spinning around my head all the time I lay in hospital. I used to imagine whether or not they would accept me back. There could be a distance between us."

Fortunately, everything ended pawsitively when Oleg was reunited with the bears last week and they accepted his scent "as one of their own." Yasha the Bear seems only too happy to help Oleg get around until he’s fit again.