Tonight ALL the dogs were acting real odd.
As I mentioned before we recently got us a pound pup fleagle named Toby. He still ain’t quite housebroken, but that only partly figures into the story.
To keep accidents to a minimum ole Toby has been sleeping in a cage. Tell him ‘bedtime!’ and he moseys in, flops down, and starts to snore… tonight after he’d been tucked in for about an hour started barking like he had to go… so we let him out and he scampered to the door. Now please understand, this dog has never before showed ANY interest in going ANYWHERE in a hurry. But when I opened the door he was off like a shot – round the far end of the house out of sight, then back again. in the door and starts frantically sniffing all around the house like he’s looking for something. All the this time he’s never made a sound since we opened the cage door.
Then he goes back in his cage and lays down.
15 minutes later, he starts to howl… Same frantic trip to the door, same rocketing around the house, same no sound. This time he comes back and wants us to follow him… we do, and see… absolutely nothing… Everything is quiet, nothing moving, not even any of the neighbor’s dogs barking…but the hairs on the back of Toby’s neck are standing straight up and he’s still acting very oddly. He drags us sniffing around the house, over to the neighbor’s, back to the house, then stands in the front yard perfectly still for about 10 minutes hackles still raised just sniffing… Then suddenly, he relaxes trots to the front door, scratches to be let in, wolfs down a whole bowl of kibble, then trots placidly to his cage flops down and goes to sleep…
Meanwhile, Kim’s chihuahuas were acting scared so bad they were shaking and whining and wouldn’t go near the door… and left us tootsie rolls on the floor…
My first guess was a tomcat, since there are a bunch of strays… Or perhaps even a neighbor kid sneaking around. I also thought about possibility of a rat, possum or coon under the trailer (shined the light under there… nothin) . or maybe even a coyote or a bear (possible, but not likely), but the neighbor has trash bags out that weren’t disturbed.
The weird thing is, in my experience, beagles on a scent simply DON’T hunt silently. They generally raise enough racket for 5 dogs… So why was Toby silent, and what was so important that he had to drag us around the house in the middle of the night like that?
