From: hckrus01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu
Subject: Re: Dog & Protection
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:58:37 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville

I'm afraid I'm about to go a little off the topic on this thread, but I did
want to make the point that no matter how protective your dog may appear to
be, there is still the possibility that you could be robbed (burgled, I 
guess would be the correct term) when your dog is home and you are not, and
it's good to think about the consequences ahead of time.

My own personal experience with this happened when I first started grad
school in Champaign, IL, and because of the limited time I had for an apt.
search and the difficulty of finding an apt. that took large dogs, I ended
up living in a pretty bad part of town (near downtown Champaign).

One night I was out late.  When I got home, I opened the door and waited 
Tristan, my Irish setter, to greet me as usual.  He didn't.  I then noticed
my TV and VCR were also missing (minor losses compared to Tristan).

The especially unfortunate thing was that Tristan had not been wearing his
collar and tags in the house.  I had assumed he was safe.

When the police arrived, I mainly babbled tearfully about my missing dog.
When they found out he was a "champion show dog" they speculated that he
had been stolen, but this information also prompted them to comb the alleys
in the neighborhood for most of the night looking for him (touching, but
elitist!)

We looked all night and didn't find Tristan.  The next morning I called my
friends all over town, asking them to look out for Tristan.  When I finally
hung up the phone for 2 minutes, I got a call from a woman about 5 miles
away who had found an Irish setter.  He looked so nice and healthy she 
knew he had to belong to someone who was looking, so she called the police
and they gave her my number.  Boy, was I lucky!  I offered her as big a
reward as I could, and she wouldn't take it.

I'll never know if Tristan tried to deter the burglars.  I had put a 
"Beware of Dog" sign in the window - that really worked! - but I also
walked him around the neighborhood, and children often approached him
asking if he bit.  I always said "no," and maybe he got a reputation for
being a wimp (now when asked that I say "not usually.")

It turns out later that my rather suspicious upstairs neighbor (in our 
building with 4 units) claimed to my neighbor DeAnn in the next apt.
(who had been robbed 3 months earlier --- hmmmm --- shortly after the
guy upstairs moved in) that he had intervened on Tristan's behalf; that
Tristan has raised a real ruckus and gone after the burglars, so they 
were going to beat the dog senseless, but my upstairs neighbor convinced
them just to kick the dog out.  Both DeAnn and I figured that the guy up-
stairs was somehow involved -- whoever robbed us was really aware of when
each of us was gone, and also robbed DeAnn when I was out of town and me
when she was out of town.

Anyway, what I learned was that even though your dog might try to defend
your property, burglars have ways of neutralizing this threat.  Now Tristan
ALWAYS wears a collar (rolled English) with tags.  I leave the collar 
loose enough so that if it got caught on something, Tristan could just
slip it off over his head.

Holly
Newsgroups: rec.pets.dogs