Kylie, The Shoe Thief

There is a thief in our rural Orlean neighborhood. We’ve discovered this over the past couple of months as some items have gone missing. The items are of low value and the intent seems mostly to show he visited us and could get away with the theft, rather than anything more devious. We even know the young thief’s name – Kylie.

Kylie is pretty good as a youngster overall and our dog Carmen likes him. If he stops by while Carmen is outside, they have fun together and to be honest, I think they wear each other out a bit. Sometimes, when Carmen is inside, I’ll see him standing forlornly on the back porch staring at the door. He won’t knock, he’ll just stare at the door. I usually relent and let Carmen outside. He gives me a friendly nod and a grunt, and off they run together.

If he’s in our physical presence, with, or without Carmen there, he’s well mannered. He’ll look me straight in the eye like the most innocent guy around. “Who me? Why no, I’d never take anything from your garage, like say a shoe for instance.”

But there’s no getting around it. If we don’t see him, or don’t let Carmen out to play, that’s when the thievery occurs. We didn’t realize what was happening at first. We usually leave our garage door open and have our shoes sitting by the back door of the house inside the garage. Cathy was the first to notice something was up. One of her flip flops was missing, but she found it later in the backyard. “Hmmmm, that’s a bit strange. I wonder…”. But she didn’t finish her sentence.

A few days later, one of her muck shoes went missing. Now, Cathy’s suspicions rose up, and she called Kevin and Julie, our neighbors. Kevin, Kylie’s dad answered the phone. “Hey Cathy” – “Hey Kevin – ummmm, is Kylie by chance a shoe thief?” “What kind of shoe are you missing?” “A muck shoe.” “Yep! I found one in the front yard – I thought it was Julie’s!” That’s when we knew Kylie was the thief for sure. Evidently he’d come to play with Carmen, and since she wasn’t there, stole the shoe as a memento of his Carmenless visit. He then took the shoe to his home, which is a quarter mile away. When Kevin returned the shoe, it was a bit strange, as there were no teeth or bite marks on it.

Yes, Kylie is our neighbor’s golden retriever.

I chuckled about it when it happened to Cathy, and said “There must be something about you he likes.” Then it happened to me – one of my barn shoes disappeared. We looked around the house, the barn and in our backyard. No shoe. Finally, we called Kevin and Julie and asked if they’d seen the shoe. All apologetic, they immediately searched their yard, and no shoe. Kev came to our place and looked around the yard, in the woods, and by the pond (Kylie loves going for a swim in our pond). No shoe. Kevin offered to buy me new shoes, but I said don’t worry about it. These things happen, and I probably needed new ones anyway.

Kylie continued to drop by to play with Carmen, but we started keeping our garage door closed, just to remove the temptation and that seemed to work. I bought new muck shoes and dutifully placed them in the garage by the door.

A couple of days later, I was walking Carmen and we passed Kevin and Julie’s home. Kevin came running out of his garage with a shoe in his hand. He’d found the shoe! Except he hadn’t. This was one of the new muck shoes I’d recently bought! What?! It turns out we’d left the garage door open earlier that morning and Kylie saw his opportunity, and seized it, so to speak.

We continue to try and keep the garage door closed, and store our muck shoes on a shelf out of reach. It seems to be working. Kevin and Julie continue to work with Kylie to understand the boundaries of their yard. In the meantime, he still drops by to play with Carmen, which she loves. I guess like many fathers, I’m a bit suspicious of her boyfriend’s intent. He’s a great dog – other than the shoe thievery thing. 😉