A few years ago I set out to steal a dog.

I knew this was a felony. It wouldn’t be my first. I’m guilty of a few others. Most were of an adolescent nature. Some were more ambitious, such as “Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government of the United States.”

Let me hasten to add that I’ve never been convicted.

The dog plot was different. It wasn’t theft as much as liberation. It was a situation where the law didn’t apply.

I knew her as Woofie (not her real name) because that’s all she ever said to me. Not a big woof. It was a gentle, muffled woof without conviction or emotional involvement.

Woofie was an old spaniel. She lived 24/7/365 on a chain. She could walk about ten feet from her little house to the far end of the overhead cable. Then she could walk back.

She was out there alone all day, all night, all summer, all winter. Nobody loved Woofie.

Her house was off to the side of a big white house occupied by an elderly couple. When I passed Woofie’s house on my evening walks, she’d give me an obligatory woof. She had little worth guarding, no investment in the big white house. One woof sufficed.

I often stopped to talk with Woofie, give her a little pet and some words of sympathy. Sometimes I brought her a morsel of leftovers.

Then I took to unhooking her chain. Suddenly free, she’d dart away, stubby tail all a’wiggle, nose to the ground, sucking up the world that had always been so close yet impossibly far.

Is unhooking a dog a crime? I suppose I should have consulted an attorney, but I didn’t.

Woofie never disappeared for long. In some sad sense of loyalty, I guess, she must have ended up at the door of the big white house. The next day, she was always back on her chain. I’d release her again, to her repeated delight.

Then one day I found the clip on her chain was welded shut. This was the first sign that maybe somebody actually wanted Woofie. It scared me a bit. But I pulled the collar over her head anyway.

Along came winter. Woofie looked depressed and dispirited, not shivering but panting out clouds of icy breath. Sometimes she stayed curled up in her little house. I could have burglarized the big white house without her giving a woof.

It was too cold. I decided to steal Woofie, take her home, give her a soft bed in a warm house.

Despite my criminal past, I was very nervous about this operation. It was going to be a little complicated. I’d have to make the snatch, then walk my furry pelf for nearly a mile back to my house.

This was no longer a matter of mischief or misdemeanor. I was entering the domain of larceny, or even, if Woofie had papers, grand larceny. Regardless of my humane intentions, if caught I could find myself in a situation not unlike Woofie’s.

I needed moral support. I enlisted a couple of accomplices, dog-loving hold-my-beer types not much more mature than me. One, in fact, could serve as a worst-case-scenario attorney, should one become necessary, though not until he got out of law school.

Armed with collar and leash, we approached under cover of darkness at approximately dinnertime. My accomplices deployed to stations up and down the road. No, we didn’t have lampblack on our faces, but it sure felt like it.

I crept in for the release. Woofie was sure glad to see me, though she seemed suspicious. His collar was tighter than usual.

Then, suddenly, a neighbor opened her back door and started whistling and screaming into the dark. She seemed to be calling her own dog, but that wasn’t certain.

In a harsh whisper my attorney, justifiably concerned about being arrested right before taking his Bar exam, shouted, “Abort mission! Repeat, abort mission!”

And so we did. We scrambled back where we’d come from to debrief and alleviate the thirst we’d built up.

For several days I avoided the scene of the unconsummated crime. But eventually I felt I had to go back and do some explaining.

But Woofie was gone.

I have no idea what happened to her. A few months later, the big white house was sold. I have no idea what happened to the two old people. Both accomplices got jobs and moved away. Only I remain to tell the tale.

Glenn Alan Cheney is a writer, translator, and managing editor of New London Librarium. He can be reached at glenn@nllibrarium.com.