NMHP Forum - What if unfit owners demand their pet back?
Question from Deborah:
Most of the dogs that come into our program are from city and county animal control shelters. The dogs are almost always in bad shape, showing evidence of neglect and often abuse. Every once in a while, we feature our adoptable dogs on TV. Twice now, that feature has brought the original owner out of the woodwork wanting to reclaim the dog he either dumped or at least never looked for in the first place.
My question is not a legal one because the answer to that is clear: Once the dog has served time in the government shelter and no one has claimed him, he is legally ours. But I am wondering how to delicately handle the original owner and keep the exchange positive. The last time this happened to us, we were harassed by a 12-year-old boy who called repeatedly saying that he would "hunt us down" and by the owner's attorney who threatened a legal battle to reclaim a 10-year-old dog who could barely walk when he came to us (he now enjoys mile walks every day) and hadn't seen a vet in over 8 years. So how do you handle the owners who demand their "property" back?
Response from Kat Albrecht:
To keep the exchange positive, I would suggest that when you have someone who comes forward to claim a lost dog from your rescue group that you seriously consider giving the dog back to them. Of course, legally the law is on your side because if this family didn't happen to be lucky enough to find their dog within the 72 hour deadline, then they lost all of their rights.
But by giving the dog back to them, you would be doing two positive things: you would make a friend of a family who might actually turn around and support your work with a donation (rather than threaten you with a lawsuit) and you would free up space within your group so that you could house and adopt out truly unwanted dogs - the owner surrenders. There are so many unwanted dogs on death row that are there because their cheese-ball owners didn't like them, couldn't handle their digging or barking or chewing, didn't know how to train them, gave up on them, or just didn't know what to do with them. In my opinion, these are the dogs that need the most help! Clearly this 12-year-old boy who lost his 10-year-old dog LOVED this dog deeply enough to make threats and to have his family hire an attorney. If that isn't demonstration of a strong level of HAB (human animal bond) between this boy and his dog and justification to give this dog back to the family who loves and wants it, I don't know what is!
If you are making your judgment of this family based on the condition the dog was in when you found it, then you need to be careful. Any dog (especially a ten-year-old dog) that is displaced like this is subject to being found in bad shape. The longer they are out there, the worse they will look. They will have ticks, stickers, cuts, weight loss, dehydration, painful walking, a crappy coat, and a fearful behavior. When determining whether or not a dog came from an abusive or neglectful home, you need to use deductive reasoning - a method of processing information - in order to come to a logical conclusion as to whether or not the dog was mistreated. Deductive reasoning is used by veterinarians, doctors, detectives, and other industries to look at all of the evidence and information in order to come up with a conclusion. It's how veterinarians look at the symptoms of a dog and then run a blood test to deduce what is wrong with it. It's how detectives look at physical evidence and motive in order to narrow their focus to identify a suspect. If deductive reasoning was not used, then police officers would be arresting the parents of all kids who broke their arms or who showed up to school with bruises - arrests that would be made based solely on the physical appearance of the child. My point is that to truly determine whether or not a dog has been mistreated, you would need to take into account the physical condition of the dog and then interview the family, interview their neighbors, and interview their veterinarian to get an accurate picture of how well that family cared for the dog.
But even if this family had not taken this dog to the veterinarian in several years - if they had not pampered the dog like you or I would have - what purpose does it serve to keep this dog away from them when they desperately want to have their dog back home? Wouldn't it make more sense to release the dog to the family who is claiming it and then fill that space with an owner surrender, barking or digging dog that you could save from death row? I know that that this isn't what you wanted to hear, that we are on opposite sides in our opinions of this, and that others on the list will disagree with me, but I strongly believe that we should return lost wanted dogs back to the families who want them home and make room to rescue the unwanted dogs from shelters in order to place them with new families who want them.
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Posted on SHARE Yahoo group June 10, 2005