Fun with dogs

There's almost always a good story to be had if you keep animals (or children :) and today's version goes like this...

About 11pm after watching an episode of Stargate SG-1, our 120 pound Alaskan Malamute, Itok (short for Maniitok) starts barking strangly. We always know when something is going on because we are used to his normal "talk" (he chats with his friends and howls a little each night) and this was not normal. We looked out and discovered a new white dog in our yard. It was not a small one either; he looked like a large Husky or maybe even a small Malamute and probably weighed 70-90 pounds. One we've never seen before. Not knowing what to think, I watched for a minute and it looked like the two of them were getting along ok (at least they were not fighting), so I went out and try to see if it had a collar, etc. It didn't want me anywhere near it, so I decided not to persist.

It looked like it was trying to climb over the fence in the upper corner of our yard. Since we live in a hilly area, our neighbor's yards in that back corner are at widely different levels. On our side, we have a 6 foot fence. In the neighbor's yard to the North, our fence looks only about 1 foot high because the ground slopes off really fast. In the house diagonally across from us, the bottom of their fence is visible to us above the top of our fence. I figure the dog got in our North neighbor's yard (I don't think it's completely fenced - or if it is, I know they have a 4 ft section in the front) and jumped into our yard at that corner.

(Here's a shot of Itok standing by the tree where he treed a Racoon last summer. It shows the fences near the corner where most animals seem to come into our yard.)

Anyway, since this dog had a collar and looked well cared for, rather than letting it out to roam the neighborhood, we called to see if an Animal Control Officer was available. One wasn't, but they sent a couple of Lindon's finest out anyway. They brought the department's animal trailer, but neither of them had any experience as dog catchers. They tried valiantly for about 15 minutes to catch the very smart, but uncooperative beast before giving up and just letting him go out the gate into the street. I asked them to let me know how things turned out as they drive off after it. I never heard...