Community Corner

Adoptable Elwood Goes AWOL

Homeowner finds a petrified pooch cowering under his porch and calls the police. But no crime has been committed. Elwood was just scared and lost.

Elwood is neither rambunctious nor necessarily adventurous. In fact, he's kind of a softy and a bit of a 'fraidy-dog.

So how did he end up in the Brookfield police log?

A resident of the 2400 block of Buckingham Place called police Wednesday to report that there was a black Labrador retriever under his rear deck. He couldn’t entice the dog out, he had to leave soon, and he wondered what he ought to do.

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Police dispatchers called the Elmbrook Humane Society, and it was noted in the call log that... “EHS sounds strangely excited about this.”

As well they might be. A (mostly) black (mostly) lab named Elwood had gone absent without leave from the shelter the night before.

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Staff and volunteers raced to the home on Buckingham – the homeowner had generously invited anyone to come on his property to play fetch while he was gone – and they retrieved the retriever.

The concerned caller can be excused if he thought Elwood was, to his eye, a pure black lab, which he's not. He doesn't even have an all-black coat, normally.

"He was covered with mud," said EHS animal caregiver Sam Truex. "We had to give him a good bath."

The Humane Society is located near the marshy floodplain of the Fox River, which was lapping at Barker Road. Only Elwood can say what he did on that dark and stormy night.

Elwood's overnight excursion began, said EHS volunteer Matthew Phillips, when a noisy garbage truck pulled in for a pickup Tuesday evening in back of the shelter.

"It scared him so bad he got out of his run and crawled under the fence," Phillips said.

EHS went into immediate action to recover Elwood, Phillips said.

"We printed up flyers, and volunteers were out looking for him all over the area," he said. "But nobody spotted him."

Naturally, when the call came in from the police, everybody at EHS was excited.

"He was our dog, he went on a little vacation, it started to rain, and he wasn't too happy about that," Phillips said.

Elwood is cleaned up, possibly cured of any wanderlust, and ready for adoption at the Humane Society, 20950 Enterprise Ave.

Elwood is actually a healthy lab-shepherd mix about a year and a half old. He is well-trained and will sit or lie down on command (especially for a treat). He is friendly and would likely be good with children.

He's just not that good with garbage trucks. 


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