Incidentally, if any Dopers reading this happen to live in the Bay Area and are looking for a new dog, there’s a sweet natured, endearingly ugly black lab/rottweiler mix looking for a new home at the Marin Humane Society in Novato. It’s a no-kill shelter, so he’ll be sure to find a home eventually, but the sooner he gets in a loving household, the better.
I was going to cuss out the loser owners of this dog, but seeing as I’ve already put more effort into taking care of this dog than they have, I’m not going to bother. Fuck 'em, not worth the effort.
Oh my, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of someone doing something like that. I wonder if the former “owners” will even try to find out what happened to the dog. Will you be keeping an eye on him, or can you keep us posted as to whether or not the dog is adopted?
And I wonder if the people who stole this dog are telling the truth about their neighbors, or if this is some sort of sick and misguided revenge on people they dislike.
Oh man, that burns me up. I’d love to see the owners of the dog recover the dog, get the letter, and call the cops on whoever returned their dog to them the previous two times. That’s some fucked up behavior.
Daniel
(in the midst of writing a letter to some people who did much the same thing at our shelter)
I would have warned the owners that that is what I was going to do the next time they let their dog run loose. I would also call and make a report with animal control.
I think it is wrong that the tags were taken off and he was handed over to the humane society.
Afterall you don’t know the circumstances of why this animal kept getting loose. Maybe they had kids that were just clueless and were leaving the door open. Or maybe they had a broken fence and didnt have the money to repair it. You just never know.
My neighbors had twp dogs when we bought our place.
Both were female and neither were neutered.
Both eventually had puppies under my barn
After 6 months of feeding and harboring them, I decided to take matter into my own hands.
I paid for the the first round of shots for the puppies as well as paying for the bitches to be spayed and drove them to a no kill shelter.
Four weeks after the dogs disappeared, my neighbor inquired as to their whereabouts.
Hello-you haven’t seen your dogs for a month and you’re just now getting around to asking about her?
I didn’t feel a bit guilty.
Oh-and the one dog that they had left?
Her husband shot it and left it to rot in the front yard after she took off with the kids for parts unknown.
I had the most wonderful Rottweiler, smart, great personality, and the absolute sweetest dog I have ever had the joy of sharing my life with.
I stole her.
At the age of 3 months old, tied up with an electrical cord around her neck, the other end tied to the bumper of a derelict bus, in the “auto graveyard” my friend’s rural Indiana neighbor kept. He never untied her or paid attention to her in the three weeks we watched the poor thing try to amuse herself and play. If me and my friends hadn’t been coming around to give her food and water every day, she’d have died, because this guy certainly didn’t do it. My friend sometimes left work in the middle of his shift when it was 90+ degrees, to make sure the puppy had water. After a month of watching this, we waited till night, took her and gave her a wonderful home with a big backyard to run around in (fenced, of course) with a loving family.
Fuck that guy, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. The cruel bastard didn’t deserve to own a dog, and neither do these irresponsible shitheads (provided the information stated in the letter is true).
First off, abandoned animals at a humane society are a royal pain in the ass. Even when shelters make provisions for people to abandon animals there overnight (i.e., provide “drop-boxes” for animals), they do so in recognition of the inevitable, not because it’s a good idea to leave an animal at the shelter. A shelter has an intake procedure designed to help them evaluate each animal that comes in and provide the animal with the best possible care and best chance at adoption. A large part of this intake procedure involves interviewing the person surrendering the animal. Abandoning the animal negates this process.
Second, the letter essentially says, “Here are some stolen goods, shelter folks; enjoy figuring out how to handle them!” If the shelter adopts the dog to a new home, and then the original owner comes along and finds out that the shelter knowingly adopted out a stolen dog, they can land in a shitheap of trouble. Instead, the shelter will probably have to harbor the stolen dog for a long time (ten days plus); while they hold the dog, hoping the original owners show up to reclaim it, that’s one less cage they can hold an adoptable animal in. They’ll have to turn animals away from the shelter in order to hold the stolen dog; the animals turned away are likely to be abandoned by the side of the road or euthanized or otherwise killed.
Third, it’s illegal.
Fourth, there are people out there who take good care of their dogs in many ways but who don’t keep them confined. Sure, it’s obnoxious to let your dog run free; but from the OP, I don’t see that the dog’s owners were otherwise neglecting the dog. For all I know, they love the dog a lot and just have misguided notions of freedom for their animals.
Fucked up behavior. I guarantee you the Humane Society isn’t grateful for this little present that’s been dropped in their lap.
When my dog was about a year old, he got a case of wanderlust for about a month. Normally, he’d hang out in our yard, check out the passers-by, etc., and then “knock” (nudge the doorknob with his nose) when he was ready to come back in. For whatever reason, during his wanderlust phase, we’d put him out and he’d hang out as usual for a while, and then he’d leave. And we wouldn’t necessarily notice right away, and when we did notice, there was no way to tell which direction he’d gone. So, one or two or more of us would head out in all directions to look for him.
Several times, though, he got VERY far away and we weren’t able to find him. Some kind-hearted people would look at his tags, call us, and we’d come get him. This happened three times as I recall. I can’t imagine if he’d had the bad luck to have been spotted “stray” by some people who didn’t both to call us the third time. Our dog is SO loved by us, and got over this phase quickly. He’s now 14. I can’t imagine losing him to some coldhearted fucks who decided that his wandering meant he wasn’t cared for and needed to be adopted by someone else.
Unless Sabbath is undernourished or shows other signs of serious neglect, I hope his owners are able to track him down and get him back, and further hope that they find a way to curb his wandering. It would have broken my heart to have lost Hobbes in that way.
Miller, if you indeed wrote the letter, I’d say you have a moral obligation at the very least to call the humane society, tell them what you did, and ask them how they’d like you to handle it. Otherwise, you’re creating a big fat problem for the humane society, in addition to engaging in illegal behavior. Though your intentions may have been good, what you did is not helpful. (If you didn’t write the letter, please ignore this).
Yeah, nice to know that if my dog is an escape artist (we have one at the moment), it automatically means I’m a bad owner who deserves to have my dog STOLEN and taken to the pound.
The dog was wearing TAGS (plural)? That means license, rabies tags, and/or separate ID. (Our dogs have all three – although the escape artist also loses tags occasionally because she’s very rought on collars.) That means they were keeping up on licensing and vet care. People don’t put ID tags on a dog if they’re planning to abandon it, or if they don’t at least give some kind of shit about the dog.
Checking up on possible neglect is the job of the humane society, not some self-appointed vigilante dog thief.
I had my previous dog for 15 years. He was happy, healthy, and well cared for. He got daily walks, and when he was too tired he got carried. When his kidneys began to fail and he lost his taste for meat, I would fry him up portobello mushrooms because he loved them. He got monthly grooming either by myself or by a professional. He had a brass bed. He had a large wardrobe. He had the run of the house and was surounded by people who loved him and cared for him.
Occasionally, he would wiggle his fat little body through the gap in the fence around the back yard and go for a stroll. I would notice within about 10 minutes and go on the hunt. Sometimes he would go an visit the neighbour’s dog down the street. A couple of times these folks phone and said he was there.
I would be horrified to think that these people would have considered removing his tags and turning him over to the humaine society because he managed to sneak away.
Miller if you wrote the letter you should call the shelter and tell them who the owners are. If you didn’t, you should still call the shelter and tell them who the owners are, if you know.
This wasn’t the right thing to do, no matter how well intentioned it was.
After my mom watched this poor little puppy get abused, picked on, beaten and starved, and after she got tired of watching this happen, feeding him, and making sure he had water, he came to her house scared shitless and she took him in, cleaned him up and gave him to my brother.
He was thin. He was scrawny. He shook uncontrollably. He had a bladder problem wherein he’d drink MASS amounts of water only to be bursting at the seams and pee it all out again. He’d never been to the vet, never been examined-Hell, I bet they didn’t even notice that his penis was deformed or that he had no testicles!
It was her meth-head landlord’s, son’s, girlfriend’s(try following that one!) puppy. In fact, it turned out that the actual owner was the child of a friend of my mom’s. She’s been friends with my family for about 30 years. After about a year, we finally told her mom that Shaft was her daughter’s puppy and she acknowledged the poor treatment of him and was glad he’d found a good home.
Dogs and cats and other household animals need good homes and need owners who care about them and for them. They have no voice, can’t complain or call the cops when they’re mistreated. And that’s why animal lovers all over will come to their rescue. They are innocents. You wouldn’t let a 2 year old be treated that way, why would you let an animal be treated that way?
One last thing-I don’t feel one bit fucking bad and I’d do it all over again if I had to. In fact, I’m sure I’ll end up saving more dogs from their evil and un-fucking-caring negligent owners before I die.