Warning: Situations may be stranger than they appear...

Proving that first impressions may not lead to correct conclusions....

Recent call on the job: A resident reported that during the night he had heard strange noises outside his home, and then awoke to find a large dog chained in a cage in his front yard. He had never seen the dog and did not know who had left it there.

I told him I would come out and have a look, and to expect me at his door directly. You see, it's not outside the realm of possibility for this particular situation to be a "set up". I stopped being surprised long ago, by how far some people will go to accomplish their ends.

For example, on more than one occasion I've had people call in and report that they found a dog. Then they'll go on the tell us that the dog is in their yard, they want us to pick it up, but they won't be home.... just go on in and get it. Of course, the dog isn't theirs. The house isn't theirs either. They just have some sort of bone to pick with the actual residents and hope to con us into dropping by and stealing their dog out of their yard.

I shit you not.... People have actually tried this scam on three separate occasions!

But I digress -

Upon arriving at the location, this is what I find:

That's apparently a full blooded Akita - of the American Variety. She's attached to a cable, which is in turn attached to that shabby looking, beat up kennel. You can't see it in the pic, but the far side of the kennel is the door which is bent pretty badly.

Here's a closer shot of the dog:

She was a sweetheart. My experiences with Akitas haven't been largely positive - I find them difficult to "read" as quickly as I can most other dogs. Never know if I'm gonna get licked or loose a finger, you might say. This one, though, was really friendly right from the start.

Anyway, I spoke to the resident and assured myself that I wasn't committing grand theft canine. We both assumed that someone had dumped the dog in his yard over night, for some reason. Seems like a fairly straight forward conclusion, yes?

Granted it was pretty odd circumstances, but during hard times people will do all sorts of stupid things with their animals. Even when better alternatives aren't that difficult to arrange. I loaded the dog on the truck and strapped the junky looking kennel to the back so I could dispose of it in the dumpster at the shelter.

Pretty white trash, huh? All I need is Granny riding on the back in a rocking chair :)

Now... Flash forward several hours and I get a phone call from a frantic lady looking for her Akita. I ask her several questions to determine if this is the same animal, and it sure seemed to be. I explained how I found the dog, and asked her if she would like to explain exactly how her dog managed to wind up chained to a cage in a stranger's yard?

Apparently, said Akita is a "digger" - who likes to dig in one particular place in the owner's backyard. In a flash of brilliance, the owner decided to chain the dog to the kennel giving it plenty of room to move around but not so much room that it could reach the digging spot. They didn't think that the dog could move the kennel (huh?) and were also not aware that the lawn maintenance people had left the gate ajar after the weekly Saturday mowing.

The dog had wandered the neighborhood most of the night, dragging the kennel behind it at the end of an 8 foot cable - undoubtedly banging into and off of everything in sight until finally getting snagged in the man's yard.

Dog and family were reunited - hopefully with a valuable lesson learned. However I wouldn't be too confident that the over all IQ of the owner's improving.

And now... random picture of a rabbit :)

I was experimenting with some photoshop soft lighting effects. I normally don't do any processing of my pictures beyond cropping. I like this effect, though.