I can’t believe this is even up for discussion. Call the owner, they need to know. If you think you’ll get ‘blamed’ (whatever that means) then call from a pay phone, but call the owner today.
I’m putting in another vote for Animal Control or the (A)SPCA.
Not only are they used to dealing with this kind of thing, they have the proper equipment to handle picking up and disposing of the remains. I’d give them your name and address and if it’s okay with you, let them pass on the info to the owners in case they want to know further details, or maybe just say thanks for making sure the dog’s body was taken care of.
I’ve called them for a roadkill before and they just took the info and thanked me. (I didn’t hit it.)
I’m adding a vote for “call someone”.
We lost our beautiful cat, Orly, last summer. She was missing for three days and we’d looked everywhere for her. We eventually got a call from the local vets to say they’d been contacted to collect her body and had identified her from the microchip she had under her skin.
They said that she wasn’t in a particularly good way and they didn’t recommend we came to see her, but they made all the arrangements to have her body cremated and her ashes were returned to us in a little casket that we have buried in the garden.
Awful as it was, I was much happier knowing that she was gone instead of worrying that she was lost and starving out there somewhere.
When I was about 17 we lost one of our dogs.
I scoured the neighbourhood for weeks.
It would be kinder to let them know, and the Animal Control route seems the best way.
I can’t see how you could possibly be held responsible for its death.
The question was what if it is the wrong dog.? That was my concern. I will flag down the park cops today and let them decide. It looks like the dog on the poster. It has a mottled fur which is what the leg that is left shows. But what if I am wrong.?
I can not imagine what killed it. We are in a suburban area, far from bears. The only wild animals I have seen are coyotes which are rare. And the furry bunnies , groundhogs and squirrels my beagles want to kill. I have hears there are some big cats being seen but I think it is urban legend. The coyotes have been known to interbreed with domestics but they may have been starving. It would be risky because if it gets hurt killing for food it is done.
Domestic dogs will pack like wolves if they are loose. But I have seen no traces of it so far.
When I was in Gainesville (Yea Gators!) a dead golden retriever lay on the sidewalk at a
fairly busy intersection for more than a week, without anyone picking up the body. Can’t
imagine how the owners of the dog didn’t see it during what must have been (?) extensive
searches of the neighborhood. Eventually I called animal control who picked up the body.
Call the owners. If animal control or the cops destroy the body, the owners will never know if it was their dog or not. My pup got hit by a train and not found for three days, mid-summer. There was not much left, but I NEEDED to identify the body, to have closure. I was able to, from an obscure part of a paw that I knew was weird. I still feel lucky that I know for certain…
It doesn’t automatically have to have been killed by a predator–it’s far more likely that it was ill (dogs on the loose will eat things that normally wouldn’t come within their purview, things that can make them really sick, like antifreeze and garbage, or possibly even poisoned bait left out for another animal) or was hit by a car, or was otherwise injured, and made it as far as where you found it before it died, and was then partially eaten by scavengers.
Which could have been practically anything meat-eating that passed by there–raccoons, crows, cats. Even peaceful family pets will chow down on a carcass if they get a chance. And scavengers can really fling the bits around in the course of their meal, so just because the carcass was found in pieces doesn’t automatically mean that something tore it apart and thus killed it.
A roving pack of loose domestic dogs wouldn’t have ganged up on another loose dog to the extent of killing it, because the highly social canis familiaris has social safety mechanisms and submission gestures that tend to abort fights before they start. The German shepherd would have either submitted or run away, but a gang of loose domestic dogs wouldn’t have deliberately surrounded it and torn it to pieces; that’s fiction.
It’s far more likely that someone’s pooch, or consecutive pooches, tromped off happily into the bushes and had a go at a dead carcass.
Moved to IMHO.
samclem GQ moderator
You need to call animal control, not just the owners. They may want to test the corpse for rabies, in case there’s a rabid animal on the loose killing other animals. They may want to try to determine if there are coyotes in the region or other issues.
Tell animal control about the posters, and give them the number of the owners. The dog may have a collar, or may be tagged with a chip or tattoo that will help identify it, but it’s the animal control guys who should handle the corpse.
You can call the owners, too, if you don’t trust the animal control peoople to do it. But definitly get them involved. Any time an animal is found in that kind of condition, they need to know about it. For all you know, they’ve handled other dogs like that, and believe there’s a dog-killing animal on the loose, and this data point is important to them.
I agree strongly with both of your posts. I would want closure and Bosda WTF?
Jim
Ignore the lone dissenter and do the right thing. I’d like to know if Buddy the Beagle were lost. Not knowing is the worst.
Please call Animal Contol and report that you found the dog. Tell them about the lost dog posters and that you think it may be the same dog. They should follow it up from there.
The family that lost that dog need closure. We lost two dogs at the same time. We put up posters and ran an ad. A truck driver saw the ad and called us. He spotted what he though was our dog on the side of the freeway. It was indeed her and our loss was great but at least we had closure.
The other dog was never found. We have no idea what happened to her. I can take a guess that she was hit as well but never spotted.
So, call someone and report it. That family needs the closure to mourn and move on. Don’t let them wonder the rest of their lives about what happend to their beloved pet.
That sucks, Leaffan. You must have been pissed. Something like that, though not as bad, happened to me when I was a kid. I used to look after about ten stray cats in our neighborhood, feeding them, “taming” them, even lugging them door to door to try to find them homes. My mom ran over one in the driveway, and didn’t want to tell me. Several weeks later, she came clean when she realized I was still hunting for that cat.
Please, gonzo - call Animal Control or someone like that and tell them and make sure to tell them about the lost dog posters - please. The dog’s family has to know - it’s just cruel not to let them know.
I flagged down the park police and showed it to them. It is spread around a 50 yard area now. Most bones are stripped but leg with foot and some hind fur are still there. It was clearly a big dog. They said they would call the Humane Society . They seemed more interested in how dangerous the animals in the park may be.
Thank you!