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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

>They looked too big for a dog

Aren't larger dog breeds about the same size as big cats? Looking it up, a small English mastiff is larger than a big leopard for example.

An escaped dog seems far more likely than an escaped big cat.

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Yeah, could have been a dog. I would say a dog with a human and we just didn't see the person's tracks is more likely than escaped though as we were miles from the nearest house and I think an escaped dog would have had the sense not to walk half way up High Street by itself in that weather. One thing about these prints is they were very clean though. This looked like something that was walking, as opposed to bounding this way and that like a dog sometimes does. All pure speculation of course, but with a dog + human I would expect them to be either walking together, or for the dog to be running around chaotically, still fairly close to the person.

>as we were miles from the nearest house and I think an escaped dog would have had the sense not to walk half way up High Street by itself in that weather.

They could have escaped a while ago and been living in the area.

Basically any scenario where you can imagine a big cat showing up a dog could do the same thing, probably more likely to as wolves at least were native to Britain.

Hmm, semi-wild dogs seems less likely to me as they'd have to hang around settlements to get food, in which case they'd get noticed and dealt with. Unless you mean they can hunt in packs and take down sheep?

Dogs are capable of hunting small game, as well as eating things like berries. Or maybe they hadn't been there that long, just longer than a day.

From my perspective, I'd assume dog until I got overwhelming evidence it was a big cat. There are far more dogs in Britain than big cats for a start.

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