My family used to have a black labrador
She was wonderfully sweet, but superbly dim. Was once frightened by her own bark in an echoing room.

However, the story that springs to mind was the time that she escaped out the front door on a dark night. We didn't notice for about 5 minutes, until we realised that she was nowhere in the house.

Quickly, a few of us ran out in different directions, trying to see where she could have gone. As we headed off along the main road, I shouted back to my friend Alex to grab a torch and head down our actual road, as it became near pitch black after a couple of hundred metres. As he couldn't find one, he grabbed his phone, and using his pathetic phone light, tried to search beyond the end of the street lights.

At this point, we'd noticed her missing about 20 minutes beforehand, and I was starting to get desperate. We hear a shout coming from Alex down the road, as he's sprinting up, running from something. Turns out he'd made it enough of a distance into the dark that he could barely see around him, and after a minute there, something had brushed against his leg. He looked down, but whatever it was had gone. At this point, he claims he felt heavy breathing, something on his shoulder, then a shout.

At this, he ran. Sprinted all the way back to mine. We see him coming up, sweat streaming from the effort of the run. As he tries to explain this, I absolutely crack up, knowing what had happened.

Turns out black labs aren't easy to see in near pitch black, especially when her new favourite game was jumping up towards peoples backs. It didn't help that when this game doesn't have the desired effect, she'd bark. My friend had near shat himself at one of the softest, friendliest dogs you'd ever meet, the fucking poof.

She died in 2009, and I still miss that dog, she was ace.
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Wed 6 Feb 2013, 16:58, Reply)