For George, a dog's life is never boring

Lassie, Hank the Cowdog and Scooby-Doo have had their dog days. Now somebody should write a book or make a television show about the real-life adventures of George.

John Considine’s dog has been homeless, tied up, befriended by strangers, even face-to-face with a pair of would-be house burglars.

Chapter one.

George was just a pup when Considine found him wandering around outside Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey, about five years ago. The mixed breed was starving to death, surviving on personality and charm.

“He’s a very, very friendly dog. He goes up to strangers, he goes up to kids,” said Considine, who adopted George into his home and fattened him up.

Considine moved to eastern New Mexico from Turkey about two months ago to become the civilian education flight chief at Cannon Air Force Base’s education center. At first, he had no place to keep George and had to put the dog in a shelter. George didn’t like it there and stopped eating. Then Considine found a house with a fence in the 1600 block of Sheldon Street near one of Clovis’ busiest intersections at 21st and Prince.

George loved his new home so much he apparently wanted to meet the neighbors. On Nov. 19, he jumped the fence, breaking away from a clothesline run with 20 feet of cable cord attached to his collar.

Considine polled several of his neighbors, put up wanted posters with a photo, placed an ad in the newspaper and became a regular at Clovis’ animal shelter in efforts to locate George, but with no success.

Was George hit by a car on busy Prince Street? Was he roaming the region, lost in his search for adventure? Maybe he wooed another stranger into adopting him?

A month went by with no answers. And then on Dec. 15, George greeted Considine in the front yard of his house on Sheldon Street. He was fattened up again, delighted to see Considine, and sporting a tag indicating he’d recently received a rabies shot. The tag included a telephone number for Jason Noack, who lived one block away from Considine.

Noack said he first saw George chained to a vacant house in the neighborhood with the cable cord still attached. He speculated someone chained George in hopes his owner would find him. Noack gave the dog water, then returned several hours later to find him still chained.

“Since no one had come by to pick him up, we put him in our back yard and made a temporary house for him,” Noack said.

He thought he might hear from George’s owner eventually, but since the dog had no identification he had no way to locate that owner.

George lived with the Noack family until Dec. 15. That’s when a pair of would-be house burglars walked in their back door.

The door was unlocked because the Noacks were letting George in and out of the house due to the cold weather and somebody forgot to lock the door in one of those transitions.

Teresa Noack arrived home just in time to see two teenagers standing in front of their stereo. Her arrival scared them out the back door and through the gate in the back yard. They did not close the gate as they ran away.

In all of the confusion, George exited the gate and went home.

“He had to circle the block to make it over, but he had to have gone right over there,” Jason Noack said. The break-in occurred about 4:45 p.m. Considine and George were reunited at 5 p.m.

“I’m going to have to keep an eye on him because I think he liked it over there (at the Noacks),” Considine said.

George has an identification tag on his collar now, so he probably won’t be away from home so long on his next adventure.

With a dog like George, you know there will be a next adventure.

Until then ...