Hi guys! New here simply seeking some advice from someone who knows Aussie law well but US examples may be helpful too!
So our dog was let out of our home almost a month ago and went missing for quite a few hours. About 3 hours after she went missing we ran out of trails of confirmed sightings and resulted to making flyers the next day and just driving around aimlessly in the hope we'd find her eventually. We then started posting monetary rewards for the return of the dog, no questions asked. We started at $500 then moved to $1000 in the last week.
Fast forward to today we receive a tip from an aunt of the person who had taken our dog off the streets. They said that the person who was in possession ( the son ) is currently incarcerated and felt that our dog would be left alone to starve while he was in prison and felt that tipping us off was the right thing to do. They were unaware of the reward. She offered to escort my partner to the premises to verify the identity of the dog but was then unavailable and instead sent my partner this persons address so that she may verify the dog's identity.
Upon arrival she could instantly tell the dog was our missing dog. She stayed in the area until someone came home which was another lady, the mother of the person who had taken our dog. After some time talking, the mother assured my partner that the dog in her back yard wasn't our dog, but if she could call out to her and she came to greet her, that she would be more convinced. My partner called out, the dog came to her. The mother than said that the dog is not hers to give away and if it was our dog, we would have to wait for her son to come out of jail. In the mean time she had brought up the fact that we were offering a reward for the return of the dog and that her son would require compensation for looking after the dog for so long. Partner scoffed at the idea and threatened to call the cops. Lady changed her attitude and gave up the dog to my partner and told her to text her to confirm the dog was hers and that the microchip had our details on it. She also proceeded to say that she'd seen the posters around town and agreed the dogs looked similar but "had no time to call us to check".
We are now in possession of our dog which is great, but the mother has retrieved our phone numbers from one of our flyers and is requesting payment of the reward money as compensation for housing the dog for a month. She then accused us of simply taking the dog because it looked like our missing dog but wasn't actually our dog. Followed by a final claim that the son had bought the dog from someone else and definitely had not stolen her. We have responded with a kind message stating that the costs of trying to retrieve our dog were tenfold in comparison, local vet has confirmed her identity due to her microchip and that we appreciate their effort for taking such good care of her over her extended holiday (ha ha).
So where do we go from here? We've had advice from a police officer to file a report with all texts and witnesses to the conversations had between my partner and the mother as proof but do they have any legal standing on trying to get us to fork out 1k? If they took us to small claims would we have any counter claim?
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/batek9/my_dog_was_picked_up_off_the_side_of_the_road_and/
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