Phantom Dog

Ever been in one of those relationshps where you're not quite sure how everything fits together? That's how we're feeling about our dog right now.

Technically, he's not our dog. Technically, he might not even be a he, though Michelle says she has looked as the dog -- medium sized, some kind of collie mix, black and white -- darts away from her as she approaches.

The dog appeared in the alley behind our house, oh, sometime in early summer, June perhaps. At first, we never saw hijm, we just knew that an awful lot of pet dishes were showing up in the alley, licked clean and looking slightly chewed. We gathered them up and took them around the neighborhood, finding homes for some of them. But they'd soon be back.

Then we saw the dog. Fleetingly. If it saw us first, it hid, and if we approached its hiding place, it took off.

We're getting closer to it now. It's to the point if it's lying in its favorite spot in a makeshift shelter Michelle made for it out of grass clippings and a pile of scrap lumber and it sees us coming, it doesn't run. it does look at us, with its glowing eyes. Michelle's been trying to coax it closer to the house with food and water, inching the bowl closer and closer to the house each night. We'd like to see what's on its collar, because we're quite certain someone is missing this dog.

Mic helle's niece's dog -- a similar farm-type dog to the one in the alley -- was stolen a few months ago, along with a few other farm dogs in Swan Valley. The dog turned up in Lewiston, Idaho, of all places -- a spot about 10 hours away, so there's little chance the dog walked there. So we're wondering if the dog in our alley is a similarly lost abductee. Once we can actually get close enough to him to look at his collar, we'll see.