Chilly Dogs

Though many men choose to snuggle with skin, bones, and a hank of hair, one Australian runner is rethinking his options this evening:

A MISSING runner who tried to keep warm by cuddling his greyhound has been found by a police sniffer dog.

Police say the 31-year-old man was found in bushland at Muskvale, near Daylesford, north-west of Melbourne, around midnight (AEST).

He had gone for a run about 6pm but took a wrong turn and night fell, bringing freezing temperatures, before he was able to find the track home.

"The runner had tried to keep warm by holding on to his dog," Senior Constable Wayne Wilson said today.

"(The) eight-month-old greyhound ... was a little on the light side and lacking in fur to be suited to the task of keeping him warm."

There's a reason the dogs Aborigines snuggled up with on a cold night weren't greyhounds: a frigid "three-dog night" would have had to become a cumbersome "27-greyhound night." With a counting system that doesn't go that high, the whole dog/cold-night rating system would have become frustrating and unworkable.