From: rhuls@liebnitz.ssd.kodak.com (Robbin Huls)
Subject: Re: We should have listened...
Organization: Eastman Kodak
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 17:06:12 GMT

In article <C0JoyD.H9B@news.cso.uiuc.edu> schlumpf@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu () writes:
>But, we really should have listened....
>
>About 6:30 last night Siegfried, our 5 month old, 60 lb black German
>Shepherd, was doing weird things. He'd run from the back patio
>door to the front door (clear path in our townhouse) and every
>trip he'd bark this REALLY weird bark that I'd never heard before
>about 3 times. < story about burglary...>

Yup, this happened once to me and once to my roommate.

I had rescued a 9 month old black lab from the pound to find a home for
her.  My GSD mix was about 13 years old.  I had a friend over and three
of us were in the living room playing Scrabble.  I had closed the door
from the kitchen into the basement because the lab was housebroken, but
not basement broken :-).  It was summer; windows were open, lights were
on.  All of a sudden the dogs started barking and running back and forth
between the kitchen and living room.  I got up and looked out all the
windows and didn't see a thing.  Mitzi, my GSD, was so excited she lost
bladder control and was peeing as she walked.  I shooed her out the
front door and went in and yelled at Bobbi (the lab).  I cleaned up the
Mitzi trail and went outside to get her.  She wasn't anywhere around the
yard.  I went up and down the street a few houses, calling her.  No
response.  My friend and I walked all the way around the block.  I was
sobbing, thinking it was my fault and Mitzi hated me for bringing Bobbi
to our house and she had run away (she never left the yard before that).
I finally saw her come trotting out of a back yard about 5 houses down
the street.  I took her home and got everyone settled and we finished
our game and my friend went home.  When he was leaving, I noticed a wet
shoe print in the back entryway and thought that it was a weird
(patterned) print for a Birkenstok shoe to leave.  Shortly after that I
was getting ready for bed and my roommate had gone down to the basement
to get her cat.  She called me downstairs and asked where my bike was.
To make a long conversation short, it was gone.  We called the cops and
he said it was best that we hadn't figured out what the dogs were
barking at and "interrupted" the thief.  I still felt REALLY AWFUL! that
I had yelled at them.  We also think that Mitzi might actually have been
chasing the guy but couldn't keep up or catch him because of her
advanced age.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I was out.  Kelsey (my 2 year old GSD)
started acting really weird, going to windows and making strange sounds
(and considering her usual repetoire of sounds, "strange" sounds is
quite alarming :-).  So they spent the night pacing around looking out
the windows and not seeing anything (including the motion detecting
lights that now surround 3 houses in a row!)  About an hour after Kelsey
finally quieted down, our neighbor got home and found that someone had
climbed up his trellis, unscrewed the bulbs from his motion detecting
light fixture, climbed in a back window that was unlatched, and stolen
a VCR, a small TV, and various other small gadgets (including all the
remotes :-b)

Needless to say, when Kelsey started acting weird one night last week,
I called the cops to come and check around.  He didn't find anything,
but agreed with our decision to call.

Robbin & Kelsey (the portable alarm)