It is now commonly thought that the Girt Dog of Ennerdale was a thylacine (otherwise known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf.) Travelling circuses and menageries of the time were known to keep what were described as “tiger wolves” – a description that fits the thylacine perfectly. As import laws and animal control were so relaxed in the early part of the nineteenth century, an escape from one of these itinerant shows is easy to imagine.