Here's a Doberman story that was sent to me by Peter Burger of Leiden, the Netherlands, who heard it from a fellow journalist:
"This was supposed to have happened last summer in Kra-lingen, a well-to-do section of Rot-ter-dam. A couple who lived in an expensive house with two large Dobermans protecting it were leaving for a holiday."They asked their neighbors to care for the dogs but warned them to keep a safe distance. The dogs were very aggressive, so the neighbors should put the food across the fence but remain on their own side. The back door was left open so the dogs could go in and out of the house.
"The neighbors followed these instructions and fed the dogs daily. But one day when the dogs' dinner was served, just one dog came out to eat. The next day only the other dog came out to eat. Something seemed to be wrong, but the neighbors were not going to risk their lives to see what it was.
"They decided to call the dog owners and explain the situation. The owners agreed that something strange was going on, and they returned at once.
"Entering the house they found a dead man in the hallway. In the bedroom, both dogs were sitting at the foot of the linen cupboard, teeth bared and growling. On top of the cupboard was crouched a second man - a very frightened and hungry burglar.
"The dogs had taken turns eating so that one would always be left guarding the intruder who had escaped them."
Peter Burger, who has written a new book of Dutch urban legends, thought this story might be an offshoot of the well-known legend "The Choking Doberman."
In that classic story, a woman's Doberman found choking in her home is rushed to a vet who extracts two fingers from the dog's throat. Searching her house, police find a burglar with two fingers bitten off hiding in a closet.
Did the incident really happen? Burger's friend was referred to friends of friends who supposedly knew the people involved, but when asked, these friends could not confirm the story.
My guess is that this is just the first example of a story that I'll soon be hearing from other places, but told with different details. It seems unlikely to me that the dogs could kill someone without the neighbors hearing it and that the dogs would take guard duty and skip dinner on a rotating basis.
Another reason for suspicion about the story is that I recently heard a similar tale involving an expensive car instead of a house. C.R. Freeman of Highland, Ind., sent me this one:
"A well-to-do businessman was returning home with his pet mastiff, which had just been given a vaccination at the vet's. He stopped at a convenience store to get himself a soda and his dog a treat.
"It was a hot day, so he left the motor and air-conditioning of his Mercedes running, and he cracked the back window to allow his pet some air.
"No sooner had the man gone into the store than a would-be thief spotted the car with its engine running; he failed to see the dog through the car's tinted windows. When the thief tried the front door and found it locked, he stuck his hand in through the half-open rear window hoping to unlock a door.
"When the car's owner came out of the store he found a man with a bloody hand writhing in pain on the ground and blood all over the back seat where he had left his dog."
The only way this story could get any better would be for the man to leave two dogs in the car, and for one dog to remain clamped to the thief's hand while the other one honked S-O-S on the car's horn."Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is available in paperback from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to him in care of the Deseret News.
1992 United Feature Syndicate Inc.