You're a Good Dog, Bear G

I was renting a house in with some friends, in what seemed like a pretty good neighborhood--nice houses well-kept lawns and all that jazz. I came home from work one day and noticed that one of the panes of the multipaned window on the front of the house was knocked out.

I thought this was strange, but I figured a kid hit it with a baseball or something. The pane, at 5x5 inches was too small for someone to have broken in, so I doubted anyone had tried. My dog, Bear, loved that the hole in the window was just big enough for him to fit his head through. I'd walk outside, and there he would be, protruding through the wall of the house.

We tried blocking the hole with pieces of plywood, and we even shoved the couch up against it, but somehow, whenever I got home, there was the big shaggy mop, punched outside to greet me. Our next-door neighbor even called the City to complain about the dog sticking out of our home. We had to close the door to keep him out of the front room after that.

A few days later, a contractor came and fixed the window, gluing another pane into the hole. I figured this strange turn of events was done with, and we let Bear have full run of the house again. I was very wrong.

It couldn't have been more than a couple days later. My boyfriend and I arrived home from dinner to find the following scene: the entire bottom half of the SAME window was smashed, including all the glass and the wood in between it. The hole was a couple feet long this time, stetching across all the panes. Bear was sitting behind the shattered window with a smirk on his face, fur covered with glass and glue. At this point we didn't know what to think. Had Houdini dog finally gone insane?

Of course, even with his previous escape work, we really doubted Bear could have caused that much damage, so we called the police. While we were waiting for an officer to show up, we surveyed the house and noted that nothing was taken. Then we went outside to inspect the considerable amount of glass in the driveway. We start wondering if Bear COULD have done this, just because he missed his constant dose of fresh air. He is a pretty big dog after all.

That's when our neighbor, the same wonderful guy that had called the city, came up to us and said, "Lucky your dog came back."

"Came back from where?" I asked, confused. Bear stared dumbly at him and at me from inside.

The neighbor goes on to tell me the whole story. A couple hours earlier, he was in his garage and he heard a crash coming from my house and the sound of glass breaking. He glanced outside a few moments later when he heard footsteps. He saw a person tearing up the street away from my house, Bear right on his heels barking and growling. They disappeared around the corner.

About 30 minutes later, after the neighbor had gone back to organizing his garage and had NOT called the police, Bear showed up back in our driveway. The neighbor called to him, and Bear gave him a startled look before turning and jumping BACK through the window to inside. So when we got home he was sitting there innocently as if nothing had happened.

When the officer showed up, he told us that by looking at the glass he could tell that the window was broken from the outside, so Bear couldn't have done it, although he probably caused a lot of the damage by diving through after the guy who did do it. Amazingly, and thanks to all his extra fur, Bear had no cuts at all from his ordeal. Nothing was taken, and no one bothered our house again.

We have a sign up in the front window of our new home: Caution, area protected by Briard Security Co.