Long story short: While Dallas had freezing temps earlier this week, a couple who own a Swiss Mountain Dog, noticed that their dog had been stolen from their covered dog run. They posted signs offering a reward for the lost/stolen dog. An anonymous person claiming to be the one that took the dog posted a picture of it on-line showing to be in good condition. The “taker” claims that he felt the dog was being neglected left outside in the cold, so they cut through the lock and took the dog. The “taker” also spoke anonomously to the news media saying they weren’t sure if they were going to keep the dog or return after they have time to take it to a vet to be checked out.
A Swiss Mountain Dog? They were bred for the cold. It’s right there in the name. With a covered dog run, the dog was fine. I’d bet the thief would also take a husky thinking they were “rescuing” it as well.
No matter what their intention, it’s still theft. Dogs are property, by law. The only state where this isn’t true is Colorado. Since this incident happened in Texas, it’s theft.
It would be no different if he or she had “rescued” someone’s inflatable snowman.
My dog is a Husky. He spends the day outside while my husband and I are at work in temperatures down to about -20C. He has a heated dog house to hang out in and he gets one to two hour off leash walks five or six days a week (which is feasible through the winter because he spends enough time in the cold to build up his winter coat and fur between his toes). He is not in need of rescue and I doubt this dog was either.
If the thief was that concerned, they should have called Animal Bylaw.
Greater Swissies are big sturdy dogs, and there are many dogs who PREFER to be outside. Just because a dog spends some time in a pen doesn’t mean it never ever gets any human interaction, for all anyone knows the dog goes to work with Dad or jogs with mom or wears out the kids in the afternoon. Maybe he’s a working dog that pulls competitively, or a Certified Therapy Dog that goes to visit nursing homes.
I say all this as someone who’s dogs are generally where I am, when I’m at home. They live inside, but when I’m not home they’re out in the yard with a snug shelter.
I’d be pressing charges for theft if someone took my dogs without even the courtesy of talking to me first!
According to the FOX4 story - His statement to us said, in part, “We saw her outside for eight hours. We did anything we would have done if we saw a dog in a car in the middle of summer. The intention was always to take her back. Once we get her checked out with the vet and get a clean bill of health, she will be returned to her owners.”
The thief did everything EXCEPT call the police or contacting the owner. Which is what they should have done instead of stealing the dog.
I have doubts that the thief had originally intended to return the dog since they chose not to report their alleged concerns to the police and may have changed their mind when they discovered the owners were looking for their stolen dog.
It will be interesting to see what the vet will do when the thief brings in the stolen dog for an examination. If the thief takes the dog to the vet.
There are a lot of “rescuers” out there stealing dogs. They have an angel complex and cause a lot of suffering, believe me. In the dog loop, I hear about it all the time. I hate them, frankly.
This whole “don’t leave your dogs out in the cold!” thing has been really getting me pissed off lately. It seems to be all over Facebook, and now this story. I’ve had multiple dogs who LOVE the cold, and I’m sure the do-gooders would think I’m abusing them.
I had one dog who simply refused to sleep inside. She slept outside, in our fenced-in yard, in all conditions. If we tried to keep her inside - which we did, when it got down to the single digits - and she would keep us up all night wanting us to let her out. I finally asked the vet, who looked at her long, thick coat and told us as long as she had a bit of shelter out of the wind, she was fine outside down to zero degrees.
I’m not saying that ALL dogs do fine outside - my two pugs, for example, would last about 2.5 minutes - but there are many who do, and people should just mind their own business unless the dog is obviously in distress. Simply being outside in the cold does not equal distress.
I hate these rescue idiots. I know someone who was hassled by a rescue idiot because they didn’t shovel out a path in the snow to the barn for horses.
They called the humane society who only knew cats and dogs and convinced them to go to the property to ‘investigate’ the ‘abuse’.
The rescue idiot was complaining that the horses had not been in the barn (that was obvious because there were no prints around the barn in the 2 foot of snow).
The owner looked at the Humane Agent and showed her how the horses had free access to the barn and could go in at any time they chose. So, obviously the horses liked being out in the pasture. Then the rescue person tried to claim that because the snow was 2 feet deep the horses weren’t able to get into the barn and that the owner should be shoveling a pathway into the barn for the horses. WTF? These were HORSES (not mini ponies, big, tall horses) that had no problem going anywhere they wanted in their 30 acre pasture, but for some reason, they weren’t able to get into the barn without a shoveled path? The owner walked out to an area where the horses hadn’t been at all and called them. They all went romping through 2+ feet of snow expecting carrots or some sort of attention. That satisfied the Human Agent that the horses were in fact able to get through snow that is 2 feet deep.
After that, the owner told the Humane Agent that as soon as she provided the law that required her to shovel out a walkway for the horses, she would plow one in.
On the other hand, it turns out that the rescue person had her sights set on ‘saving’ one specific horse (a registered mare that was worth a lot for breeding) and eventually that rescue person was charged with theft by deception for stealing other people’s horses by threatening them with ‘investigations’ by the Humane Agent on horses that were also registered and on the valuable side.
So, I vote that the person totally stole the dog and knew that with all the posters, it would be totally recognizable and there was no way they could keep the dog or sell it without being found out. So, they returned it. I hope they still get charged with theft. And, if that was a registered dog, she could be worth in the range of $2k, so I hope that is grand larceny in the state of Texas.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I briefly house-shared with an idiot animal rights idiot who did something similar- she saw a few dogs outside in a pen, and nicked them, because it was ‘cruel’ (without of course checking how long they were being left out, or anything else). She wound up keeping one, which was a puppy at the time she got it. She refused to take it out the house in case the previous owners saw it (and this was a big, active dog), and refused to train it- not even to not run out into the road, because that was ‘against nature’. It wasn’t house trained either, which rubbed off on her other two dogs, which previously had been.
In retrospect, I should have reported it to the RSPCA or someone really, but it was one of those where she started off looking after it ok, but just gradually got worse (plus she kept claiming it was only temporary, and she was looking to rehome it, but then kept turning down places for stupid reasons). I had no idea who she nicked it from, and if they reported it missing, I never found out about it, so I couldn’t let them know.
Why do we only have two choices of “thief” or “rescuer”? Why can’t we choose “thief and animal abuser”? They at the very least caused the dog distress by taking it to a strange place without its family, and if the dog had any sort of medical condition (which of course they didn’t know), they could have been endangering its health or life.
I once had two corgis in crates in my van, on a road trip. We were eating dinner in a restaurant, and luckily I locked the van – in those days I wasn’t too regular a car locker. When I came out (with the remains of my steak dinner in a napkin for the dogs), I found an incoherent unsigned note on my van, indicating that this woman had tried to rescue my dogs from their abusive treatment but failed. The stated abuse was that 1. they were in cages and 2. they couldn’t breathe because the windows were rolled all the way up.
These people are dangerous, folks. They gravitate to organized dog rescue organizations and do very strange things. They have the courage of the righteous of God. Very scary.
Calling Animal Control accomplishes exactly two things: jack and shit. As long as the animal has some amount of food, some amount of water, and some form of shelter, and isn’t obviously emaciated, their hands are tied. At least in the jurisdictions where I or a coworker have called them. The food, water, and shelter can be clearly inadequate for the animal in question–you can have a 100-lb dog tied to an unshaded doghouse in 100-degree heat all day with half a cereal bowl of water–but as long as there’s something there, there’s no official channel to get the animal help, and the owners are often hostile if you try to talk to them. So I totally understand the temptation to just take the poor thing.
This, however, doesn’t sound like that sort of situation. A Swissie at 30 degrees or so? In a covered, and therefore presumably dry, non-muddy run? For 8 hours? Keep an eye on the situation, but that dog is most likely just fine.