Cryptozoologists Needed

For context, sometime circa. 2015, my mother picked me up from school and took us down the backroads route home since there was less traffic. As we were passing through the countryside, she offhandedly pointed out a dog walking around the front yard of a house overhead—in the way that anybody who gets excited when they see an animal would. I followed the direction she was pointing at, and it took me only a few seconds of processing what I was looking at to feel shaken to my core.

The dog was large when compared to the scale of the house; I'd guess 4-4½ ft. (approx. 122-137 cm) tall without standing on its hind legs. Its limbs were bent in a gangly, gnarled shape, its posture hunched over as if on high alert. Its fur was long, unkempt, and pitch black. With a normal black dog, you might catch glimmers of brown or red in its coat under strong lighting, but not this one. It was a flat, two-dimensional black like a sentient shadow. If not for how it stalked off into the backyard, I might have thought it was a leftover Halloween decoration with how stereotypically werewolf-like it was.

I told my mother everything I was thinking, and she agreed it was strange and sped off without adding any other input. Between that and my initial shock, I didn't even think to grab my phone to take a picture of it, which I regret a little now in hindsight.

In recent years upon remembering it, I've tried looking into possible logical explanations for its off-putting appearance, including rabies and injury. And while I haven't ruled anything out, I still have yet to reach a concrete conclusion. I've heard terms like "hell hound," "dogman," and "skinwalker" get thrown around in certain circles, but I'm still uncertain. If anybody has any possible explanations to end this decade-long confusion, I'd love to hear them!