I wouldn't mind a picture, but I can post a picture in turn.
I know it sounds odd, but it is possible. The Aussie dingo has been considered a feral pest for many years, only recently have there been efforts to protect them. They technically deserve protected status here because they have been in Australia, it is believed, for about 40,000 years. But because they are a fairly unique breed of dog, they have been put in zoos and private animal collections around the world. Also, they interbreed readily with domestic dogs to a varying extent, so lots of people in Australia who own a mongrel/mixed breed probably have a dog with some dingo in it.
A pure-bred dingo has a blonde coat, sometimes varying to light brown. They are slightly smaller than a labrador, up to the same size. Like a small short-coated lab. Sometimes they have black markings, like a flush on the coat in some places (such as the muzzle). Ears are often a darker brown. Tail is often white-tipped. Strong-looking jaws (stronger than average dogs) but a fairly standard looking dog muzzle. The angle of the jaw may be slightly wider which gives it strength. Narrowed, wolf-like eyes. Often a lovely, loving, loyal nature but very active and difficult to discipline. Similar to wolves in how to discipline them. They tend to not bark (but can - tends to be less or absent), but have a wolf-like howl, to a lesser extent. They dig. A lot. They also will dig out of a yard. Need a lot of exercise. Get roller blades for yourself.
We had a dingo for a few weeks/months. A friend's son brought it home, his mother gave it to us because she didn't want it. We were told it was a stray. As I looked at it (ours was very pale, almost white) I was increasingly certain she was a dingo. I then found the article I referred to above which said that there are dingoes all over the place here including the cities. I asked my friend - her son had found the dog while bushwalking and "it followed me home, mum!" I asked where he had been walking, and it was in a national park (second oldest in the world, or oldest depending on how you measure it - same age roughly as Yellowstone, this park) and not far from a small zoo which happen s to also have dingoes. Which sometimes get loose and aren't always found.
We could not keep ours in, had to find a new home for her. But she was a good dog apart form her wildness and digging. I had a fall one day in the yard, she stayed with mer, licking my face and whining, until I was able to climb up using her back. Sadly, the people I gave her to couldn't confine her either. She got out, got in with a pack of dobermans that used to go hunt in the national park and they were all shot by the rangers for worrying deer.
When I was a kid, my brother found a dog in the bush. He'd gone in to chop wood, found the dog in the forest, very wild, he said, and managed to tame it. I remember saying a the time, "She's a dingo!" and my family laughed at me. "There are no dingoes here, they only live in the outback!" they laughed.
But dingo she was. She was one of the blonde ones with a black flush, but had the typical white tip to the tail. And wolfy eyes. At first she was vicious around me (I was only 6 or 7 years old) but over the next couple of years she calmed down and was intensely loyal to my brother and his family. She was brilliant with the kids when they arrived. Lived to be about 12 years old, a much loved family member. But they never at the time accepted she was a dingo. "Must have been a stray," they said. Now, they believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo
http://www.australianfauna.com/dingo.php
http://www.kidcyber.com.au/topics/dingo.htm
Note that in these photos, the dingoes are fairly skinny. They can get fat like any dog. My brother's dog was chubby especially in later years. She was skinny to begin with.
How would an Aussie dingo get to the US desert?
It is possible. Quite possible, by their very nature. First, as I said, a lot of Aussies don't realise that their pet dog that one day followed them home, or was born to a friend's dog who one day followed THEM home, could be dingo, or have dingo blood. Second, they are more difficult to manage unless you are good with dogs, so they are more likely to wander (males interbreeding with whatever they find on heat - producing more hybrid dingo pups on some unsuspecting family pet) or simply not come home one day. Or get lost while on holiday. Third, a zoo dingo can escape. The fences needed are quite robust. Wild dingoes (even ones in zoos) are scary. Some more so than others. Our local zoo later on made an effort to socialise their dingo pups. I have a photo of daughter in law (she and difficult child 1 met at the local zoo where they were both working) with some young dingo pups, playing with them.
The pups are cute, like a lot of pups. They look a lot like corgi pups, without the short legs. It is very possible that someone had some pups in Australia as pets, then moved to the US. Or they could have been smuggled to the US for sale to a collector or zoo, and then escaped into the desert.
They tame fairly easily, and for wild dingoes, that is a problem. They lose their fear of man and become dangerous. They scavenge at campsites, they will even attack if you don't hand over the food, like a mugger on the street. They will be more likely to attack a small child - they hunt. Obviously a well-fed pet feels no need to hunt a child.
The Seinfeld episode you refer to was spoofing Meryl Streep's role as Lindy Chamberlain in the movie "Evil Angels" (possibly called "A Cry in the Dark" in your neck of the bush). Lindy was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor's wife who went camping with the family (husband, two sons and baby girl) when her daughter was six weeks old. They often went camping and were having a break to bond as a family. They had travelled to the Red Centre and were camped at Uluru (formerly known as Ayer's Rock). People are not allowed to camp there any more. She had put her kids to bed for the night, including the baby. Was returning to the tent to get some beans when she saw a dark shape coming out of the tent with something in its mouth. She checked on the kids - the baby had been at the far end of the tent, the creature had stepped over the boys to get the baby, who was gone. They later found a fine spray of blood on the tent wall there. That's when she emerged and screamed, "Help, someone - a dingo's got my baby!"
It was a tragic case, badly handled. Two inquests, the first said a dingo did it, the second blamed the mother as murderer with a pair of scissors (they found the baby's jumpsuit, never found the baby. The baby had also been wearing a matinee jacket, the mother said. Prosecution case insisted no matinee jacket.) Lindy went to jail. By this time she had another baby - another girl. They took the baby off her. Then a few years later, they found the soiled, bloody matinee jacket, which cleared Lindy, showed she had told the truth. She was released. it had been a horrible time - while in prison, one of her boys lost an eye in an accident (and she was not permitted to see him). The jail was thousands of miles away from family. Her marriage broke up a few years after she was released. Remitted, not exonerated. Exoneration took another few years. She has remarried (so has her husband) and now lives with her new husband in WA. Sadly, I don't think she and her youngest daughter have ever bonded well, because she was not there for the first five years or more of her life.
I was a sceptic, I also did not believe it was a dingo. But I also did not believe she was guilty. However, one day when difficult child 3 was about 3 years old and we were on holiday up on the border (where we were last week), we visited a wildlife park there (Fleay's). There, they do not socialise their dingos (a mistake, I think). The dingo fences in the pens are very high, curved inward. Like big cat enclosures. There is a raised boardwalk running through the enclosures. difficult child 3 was out of his stroller and running ahead on the boardwalk and I saw the dingoes in their enclosure begin to stalk him. it was one particular group in their own pen, the Fraser Island dingoes, I think. Then as he got close, they attacked, throwing their bodies against the wire fence. it was silent, except for the sound of the fence going clang and difficult child 3 laughing at the funny doggies. I was horrified and very upset - first at the really scary behaviour of the dingoes - it was like silent lions trying to attack you through a fence - and at myself, for what I had believed of Lindy Chamberlain, wrongly, for so many years. Here I was seeing dingoes behave as I had insisted they never did.
In Australia we now know dingoes will attack, mainly wild dingoes in p-acks, especially where they have lived near tourist spots where they scavenge or are hand-fed by idiots. We've especially had problems with the white dingoes on Fraser Island - a rare, endangered sub-breed. Kids have been killed there so tourist safety has been tightened up as a result.
A pet who is a dingo, is probably not going to be a problem this way. But there is always a wildness to them in some way, even though once they bond to you, they are intensely loyal and protective.
Check out the photos, Steely. See if they look familiar.
Marg
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