MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A thylacine in Scotland?

I came across this story recently in a book titled `Highland Folk Tales` by Bob Pegg (The History Press 2012) pages 85 - 86. Now I am not utterly convinced it was a thylacine, but what else could a dog with tiger stripes realistically be? Unless it was a wild cat? But no serious rustic person well familiar with his or her environment is going to get confused between a wild cat and a feral dog. Or maybe it was another now  long gone quadruped? Sadly there is no source for the story but it has the feel of the Nineteenth Century to it.Could thylacines have escaped into Scotland once?

Anyway without further a-do, here are the salient elements of the whole story:

THE TIGER-STRIPED DOG

" There`s a place in Achiltibuie called Polbain. Many a time I called there, many a time I hawked it (sic). And there was a man there. Aonghas Donn they called him in Gaelic, and that is the equivalent of Brown-haired Angus. And I came to his door one time, and I said, `I`m looking for Aonghas Donn.` And the daughter came out, and she said,`Aonghas Donn.Oh yes.`

Then he shouted from inside, `Ah well boy, I was Aonghas Donn at one time, but now I`m Grey-haired Angus. Come in!` The account goes on to say that his grand-father was once telling the narrator of this story`s grandfather how the former had to fetch some horses from the vicinity of Loch Lurgainn, when what was at first thought to be "a stray dog" approached. "...but as it was coming nearer I could tell that he never had anything to do with humans."

So the thylacine,or whatever it was, grabbed hold  of the witness`s arm and started "chewing it" (!) and fortunately the human victim had a small pen-knife on him which he stuck deep into the beast`s neck. After a struggle the man got back to his home in Polbain and a doctor saw him and got "most of the poison" from the bite out. "But the dog," he said, `I can never get over. It was his colour. He was tiger-striped. I never saw a dog tiger-striped in my life. But I done away with him." And he said to my grandfather, "Do you know this, there`s hills up there - go up to Cul Beag, Cul Mor, even over Quinag - and you`d be very surprised at what you would see or meet in that hills yet."

So that is the end of that story. And I didn`t know the man it happened to, but  I did know his grandson. (1)

Loch Lurgainn is on the far north-west coast of Scotland, opposite the Isle  of  Lewis in the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. Polbain is right on the coast near the Loch. 

1. B.Pegg Highland Folk Tales (2012) pp 85 - 86.