Man finds his lost dog 9 months later. Who should get to keep dog?

Stolen dog used to belong to suspect; case dropped

A South San Francisco man who ran off with a dog after struggling with its owner will not be prosecuted because the dog actually used to belong to him, a deputy district attorney said Friday.

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Sicat said the brown Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix was his dog Bruce, which he lost about a year ago, said Sgt. Joni Lee, spokeswoman for the South San Francisco police. After fighting with the woman, he took the dog off his leash and ran away with him.

The woman, whose named has not been released, adopted the dog in October from the Peninsula Humane Society after finding it in poor health at her South San Francisco apartment complex. She named it Kelsey.

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The dog was returned to the woman after police arrested Sicat. If Sicat still wants him back, he'll have to pursue a civil case against the woman, Serrato said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/24/BAMN1K2A98.DTL#ixzz1QDuSr2Gu

Easy peasy.

by the person who essentially rescued the dog from homelessness.

All she needs to do is add up a bill for boarding, vet bills, and other expenses related to the dog's care and present it to him as a condition for getting the dog returned. After all, if the second owner hadn't intervened, the dog would likely have died.

I've been through a similar situation. A cat I'd raised from birth wandered off. I was devastated, thinking he'd been hit by a car or worse and was out there hurt. About eight months later, I saw him a little over a mile away, sleek and sporting a new collar. I left him where he was since he was obviously loved and well cared for, never said a word. I was just silently grateful to the people who had taken him in. He was a neat cat.

Letting go wasn't painless, just the right thing to do.

him. Probably thought he was a stray.

I was just glad to see him alive and cared for.

moved into the house behind ours, where they kept it inside. We chatted with those neighbors, and they kept the kitty. When it turned about 20 years old, it came back to our house and moved back in, where it lived until it was 25. When it died, the neighbors joined us in burying kitty.

We had another cat, a stray, who moved in with us. Indoor/outdoor kitty. One day, it showed up with a new collar and a note. Turned out it was owned by a woman down the street. She had gotten a new cat, and this older one wasn't amused, so it moved in with us. We chatted, and the cat stayed with us, since that was its choice.

Kitty decides where kitty lives, it seems.

We had another cat for several years. It disappeared one day. We put up a flyer at our small town post office with a photo on it. A woman called and said she thought she had seen the cat hanging around a restaurant nearby. Sure enough. There was a seafood restaurant about four blocks from our home, right on the water. We went down there, and kitty was on the patio dining area, mooching scallops and stuff from the restaurant's patrons. It saw us and ran over, meowing. We took it home and started giving it canned food instead of dry. It stuck around after that.

Pretty smart kitty. Nicely-prepared seafood and a comfy place to lie around near the water.

Kitties do what kitties want to do.

Glitch.

In Grade 4 I took one of my one of my favorite books to school and it was stolen. A few weeks later I noticed the younger sister of one of my classmates holding the book tightly as she lined up to go into school one morning. I was indignant, and was getting ready to raise a ruckus, but just the way she was hugging the book made me realise she loved the damn thing as much as I did and I didn't have the heart to say anything. Never did get the book back of course.

and how hard did the Peninsula Humane Society try to find him. The story says there is no question that it is the same dog, which suggests the dog was chipped and/or tattooed.

Mistakes do happen, but PHS is usually very good about reuniting animals and humans. Without knowing more, it sounds as though the woman adopted the dog in good faith, and the dog was in PHS's care for a while prior to being released for adoption.

dogs went on the lam, I called the dog wardens in two towns and the adjacent city just to make sure I covered all the bases. (The city line is 1/4 mile away, with the other town half mile away across a bridge.)

Why would someone looking for a lost dog fail to contact the local dog catcher?

PHS is a private animal rescue and shelter, though they do have a contract with San Mateo Co (where euthanasias have been reduced 95% - they really are a great agency). They're not Animal Control, though; and there are many shelters in this area.

doesn't contact the right one. It'd be nice to have a web site maybe listing lost and found animals.

did the dog get stolen...did that original owner neglect it...seemns like there's more to this story.

She had been rounded up as a stray in a general sweep of a seedy trailer park. The poor little thing looked like a ball with legs because she was so filled with worms. After I adopted her I learned someone had shown up at the humane society to claim her and they told her it was too late, the cat had been adopted. Thank heavens. I wouldn't have sent her back to a life of neglect. I say in this case the woman who found the dog in poor health gets to keep it.

They are both very friendly and very personable dogs. I took them to the vet to get scanned for a chip, I put up found dog notices at all the vet offices and pet stores in the area and checked for lost dog notices. After waiting a month with not a peep, I had them fixed and microchipped. They are now my dogs. They are fully integrated into the family and happy. If whoever lost them wasn't responsible enough to have them fixed and have some mechanism for identifying them, they aren't responsible enough for me to surrender the dogs back to their care.