Okay, where do I start??? Last night I was at work and around 5:15 I get a text from my mother saying that her dog Coralinne is missing. My mom has had this dog for almost 7 years and it's basically her whole world. My mom is not well health wise, is on oxygen 24/7, and lives by herself. So it can't be understated how much the dog means to my mom. If ANY of you reading this are dog owners, I really don't need to say anything more, it's understood.
Mom lives way out in the country, on a 3 acre lot. She has a very large, fully fenced in backyard, that we have NEVER had dogs escape from. The dogs have a doggy door and can go outside whenever they need to potty or just want to play outside for a bit. We sit far off the road so people driving by would not see the dogs and say "i'm gonna steal that dog!". Nothing like that has ever happened, and she's been living there since i was 3, and i'm 34 now. So I say all this to point out that it was VERY strange for the dog to be missing, because she's never left the yard once in 7 years. So with that being said, when i got the text from my mom, i RUSHED over to her house. I know she can't get around well and i know i need to walk the whole yard and surrounding area/woods and try to find her.
I got to moms house around 5:45 and started by looking through the whole front yard, then I went inside the house and checked every single spot where a little dog could go (She's a 15 pound Brussels Griffon, forgot to mention that). No dice. I then went in the back yard, searched under our deck, checked the detached garage, walked the entire fence line and found no holes/escape areas. My thoughts started to go to someone probably stole the dog, and i got an awful feeling in my stomach. The whole time i'm trying to keep my mom calm as she's 64 with health issues and i dont want her to have a panic attack/stroke/heart attack because she is so stressed out by the situation. After searching the entire immediate vicinity, we get in her car and go to drive to the neighbors house that lives behind her in the woods, about a quarter mile or so back. I hop out while she drives up there and look through the back woods behind our property calling out for, sloshing through the mud (its been raining for weeks in NC) and completely ruining my work shoes/pants while doing so. I didn't care though, I just wanted to find my moms dog.
Our neighbor, after hearing my mom tell him whats happened, starts looking through the woods also. Mom says we should go knock on other doors and see if anyone knows anything. This is a pretty rural area, so when i say "neighbor", i mean a quarter mile down the road. But we proceeded to the next closest home and knocked on their door. We had never met these people before, but they did build a home a few years ago on the lot next to my moms. A nice woman answered the door and i quickly explained what happened, and she said, "Okay, first, DONT WORRY, the dog is OKAY!" and i intermediately breathed a huge sigh of relief. The woman went on to explain that earlier in the day a little dog had wandered in to her yard and that her wife saw her and picked her up. Not knowing who's dog it was, the neighbor went and knocked on my moms door (she wasn't home) and the 2nd neighbors door (also not home). Having to go to work, she didn't know what to do, so she did the RIGHT THING, she went to vet to have the microchip scanned and hopefully find the owner.
Now, this is where the situation takes a turn for the worst. My mom was told by the breeder when she received the dog that the microchip had been registered to my mothers name and address. My mom has NEVER lost the dog so at no point did she ever have the chip read when she took her to the vet the couple times each year that she does. Now, before you just down her throat, she KNOWS she should have double checked this in hindsight, and as of this morning has gotten all of the info updated to her name and address. She admits this was her fault and she should have double checked instead of taking the word of the breeder. With that being said, the animal hospital called the breeder and without missing a beat the breeder said "yep thats my dog" and they dropped her off to the lady, who we'll call Mary, even though i could call her MANY other names.
The 2 nice ladies had written down the phone number of the woman who got the dog (the breeder) and gave it to me. Thank GOD they had that number, because I dont know if we'd ever have seen her again without it. At this point, i'm just super happy that someone has the dog and me and mom just assume the lady is holding Coralline until we call her and come and get her. So we drive up the road to get cell service, and call her. And call her again. And again. She keeps sending my calls to voicemail...I found it a little strange because given the situation of you having someones dog you'd think if a random number had called you 3x in a row you'd pick it up, especially at 6:30 pm in the evening. But, i told myself she could be busy with any number of things and we'll just give it a few minutes. I split up with mom who decided to drive up to the local vet office and see if anyone was still up there who could maybe provide the address of the lady who has her/move the situation along faster. I start heading home. After i get home and i'm FINALLY pooping (been waiting since 4:30 pm) my mom calls be BALLING her eyes out. I am NOT used to hearing my mother cry so i assume something is terribly wrong and start worrying immediately. She says to me that Mary finally picked up her phone and is "refusing to return the dog" saying that she was a "stray" and that "she'll have to think about it" if she's gonna return her or not. Now, to be clear, this dog is VERY healthy. My mom is a DOG PERSON in every sense of the word. She's been a dog groomer for 40 years, owned and bred countless dogs...The dog had just had a manicure 2 days prior to this happening and gets groomed like clock work. She is my moms treasured pet so she takes VERY good care of her. So for the lady to insinuate that somehow the dog was being mistreated or is in poor shape was insane...And there's something else crazy about it...
My mom is still FRIENDS with this lady on FB. She regularly comments on moms photos of her and Coralline together. So its not like the breeder gave this dog away 7 years ago and has NO IDEA which client it was or if the dog had been on the streets for weeks. She knows my mom and knows EXACTLY who the dog is and i have photos of her commenting on my moms pics of the dog to prove it, going back over FIVE YEARS.
So, we've established that :
- Moms dog went missing
- It ended up with the breeder
- The breeder knows EXACTLY who my mom is and who the dog is
- The breeder will NOT return the dog or any of our phone calls
At this point, i am PISSED. I get the phone number from mom and start texting the lady. I had texted her earlier in the day, and was very polite, this is when i called her the first 3 times. The message was polite, and sent at 6:15 pm, it read :
Hi Mary, I believe you may have my mother Katie's Brussels. Can you call me?
She did not respond to this message or any of my calls. She had told my mom she wont give the dog back and left her in tears, and then wouldn't return her calls. My wife called my brother in law who is a police officer to ask what he thought we should do, and he said we needed to at the very least file a police report immediately so there is a record of us trying to locate the dog. So, as a last ditch effort, i figured i'd message the lady and tell her exactly what i was going to do. I'll admit, i was pretty nasty in these text messages, but you have to understand my mother is in tears because her child is missing and the woman has ducked SIX of my calls at this point and will not return texts from me or my mom. Here's what i said :
Mary X. I am giving you 5 minutes to call me back and return my mother's dog that wandered in to our neighbors yard today. If you don't I am calling the police and will have you arrested. We have vet records and photos for the last 5 years of Coraline and she is MOM'S DOG. That dog means everything to my mom and I just spent 3 hours wading through mud in the woods looking for her. We can still resolve this friendly, but I am not messing around.
I will call your employer first thing in the morning at REDACTED in Monroe and make sure they know what you have done also. You have 3 minutes and im calling the police. I'm not fucking around with you.
1 minute
Okie dokie I'm friends with the Sheriff in REDACTED so be looking for a knock on your door shortly. I already have the vet papers and photos to prove she's mom's. You can't just steal people's dogs after something awful happens to them. I hope we can press charges for kidnapping.
I just asked, it is indeed a felony!! A 10 year felony and akc chip does not indicate ownership, but all the photos and vet records we have definitely do. I have a police officer coming to my house right now this is seriously your last chance.
____
She didn't respond to any of those messages. I talked to my mom again and told her i was on my way back to her house. I called the county Mary lives in (next town over) police dept and explained the situation, the dispatcher was shocked and disgusted but explained to me we would need to file the report where the dog originally went missing (moms home address) and transferred me over to our local police department. I explained the situation again over the phone to our local PD, and they said they would have an officer out shortly.
My own brother said I shouldn't call the cops, and that we should just wait until tomorrow and bring all the papers we have up to the ladies employer, which is a pet related business, and try to solve it that way. But my police officer brother in law insisted we needed a police report ASAP because if we waited a full night before filing one it could turn in to a civil matter and look like that we weren't all that concerned about the dogs well being if we wait until the next day to call. So i ignored his advice and had the cops come.
So I arrived at moms house and we're waiting on the cops. My mom informs me that the ladies husband is actually a police officer who is also army reserves who is currently deployed to texas building "the wall" (thats a different topic though). I thought this was good because maybe she would call him for advice and he could talk some sense in to her. So the lady FINALLY calls my mom back and strangely starts talking in circles about how she was just trying to make sure that it was indeed moms dog and she just wanted to make sure she was okay and blah blah blah. I didn't hear the actual conversation, only my moms side of it and my mom frantically saying "I don't really care i'm not mad just PLEASE give me my dog back" and i whispered to her "TONIGHT, not tomorrow" because i knew if we let the lady keep her tonight there was a good chance we'd never see her again. After talking for a long time the woman finally agreed to meet her at the womans jobs parking lot and my mom hopped in the car and went. She didn't want me to go with her because she thought if the woman saw me she might get scared and run off, which i understood, and the cops hadn't yet arrived at moms and i wanted to make sure we filed the report still in case the woman screwed mom over.
So my mom is on the way to meet the lady, about 30 minutes away. I wait for about 30 minutes and text my mom asking her if she got the dog yet. The cops then arrive. It was one officer. He gets out and starts talking to me and asking me exactly what happened. As i'm almost done recapping everything i just told you, my mom calls, and, THANK GOD, she has the dog in her possession. The cop was very "coppish" about the situation and even though he said he was a "dog person" he was being very rude towards me for some reason. he then started explaining to me exactly what constitutes a felony (a subject i NEVER brought up to him) and got VERY in depth explaining that it would indeed be a class H felony with a penalty of 10 years prison (exactly what i texted the lady) IF we could prove she stole her or picked her up from the vet and were able to prove it was my moms dog and she refused to return her, but more than likely it would just be a civil matter. At this point i start laughing inside because i realize what's happening is it's a classic "brothers in blue" moment of the guy kind of hinting at the fact that the husband had clearly talked to him about the situation, and this cop knew EXACTLY what i had texted the woman. The guy even said something to me about "like, say for instance that truck was registered in your wife's name (while motioning to my truck) but you were the one driving it, how would you prove it's yours???" i then realized he knew what vehicle i was driving and who it was registered to (my wife is first on the title and i'm second)...i had never mentioned my wife/truck or anything like that to him, and he couldn't see the plate when he pulled in so he couldn't of ran it..basically, he did his homework on me before arriving. SO basically the guy was trying to intimidate me with all the shit he knew about me to get me to drop it...which i found hilarious. I wasn't going to argue with him though because at this point my mom had her dog back and that's all that really mattered to me at the end of the day. The cop initially said he was going to stick around and tell everything he had told me to my mom too, but i guess he got bored because the dog was returned and there was no more drama for him to take in, so he shook my hand and left. He wasn't an asshole by any means, but he definitely knew exactly how to tell me he knew everything about the situation from top to bottom without coming out and saying it, which i found quite funny.
Look, I know my mom shares a bit of blame for not updating the chip. But i would NEVER even THINK of telling a crying old woman over the phone that i'm not returning her dog. I have found 2 dogs in my years roaming through my yards and luckily both of them were chipped and I was able to immediately return them to the owners myself. This lady...She is a monster. I hope she is disgusted with herself, because i know i am.
I mean just ask yourself, how would you feel if someone refused to return your moms dog, and they KNEW it was her dog, and they KNEW it was in great health and had only wondered 50 feet down the road for the first time in its whole life??? And your mom was BALLING her eyes out?? What would you do in that situation???
I'm so glad my mom got her back. She updated the chip info this morning, and the dog isn't allowed outside without supervision anymore. So crazy. Thoughts?
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/b08zha/this_lady_tried_to_steal_my_moms_dog_long_post/
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