He's a handsome guy. Glad it wasn't your Bear running funny, that meant yours was alright. A real bear, glad you got to see one, and hope it ventures some where else away from your home and pond.
I know what you mean, about some of them just not wanting to stay home. Our lab seems to have or should I say HAD that problem. He was neutered while he was just a pup, so that isn't the problem. We have a fenced in yard, and he would go to the corner and climb. When we moved the fence back, that helped for awhile. I think it confused him, then we would be out front and here he would come. Once, the kids were playing in a friends yard and he climbed and went down there to them. We finally put him on a 40 foot cable. He gets to cover alot of the yard, we would go longer but he would get tangled. He has a nice area, with a big tarp for when the sun is directly over head, other than that he always has shade. Here lately he's been in the house most of the time because of the heat, but he'd rather be outside. He's smart, does anything you tell him....sits, fetches, lays, rolls over, speaks, shakes paw...etc. Just doesn't want to stay in the back yard if were in the front.
Then we had a chow mix once, the only time she would get out is if it was storming. We would someone climb, jump the fence. I'll never forget once, I had to go catch her and the tornado warning sirens were going off.......I grabbed her collar and just pulled and ran trying to get back into the house. Then one time, she ran and got on my neighbors porch during a storm...she called and told me she could stay until the storm let up and let her in her house. The vet was going to give her a nerve pill for when it stormed, but the only problem was you needed to give it to her at least an hour before a storm. That's kind of hard to predict, shoot the weather forcasters hardly ever get that right.
Kim