Tough issue #1, "found owners"

I'm going to write about a couple of tough issues in the rescue world.  The pictures of Trooper and Maya are unrelated to the subject matter but too cute not to share. 

First up, the "found owner" problem. 

The local news recently picked up a story about a woman who says she found her long lost dog posted on Craigslist being offered for adoption by a rescue group.  Facts in the news story were scant because it was obviously written to provoke a "oh my, isn't that terrible" emotional response and I suspect that facts not fitting that scenario were glossed over.  The story goes that the dog disappeared from the owner's back yard.  The unnamed rescue group pulled the dog from a shelter, and posted it on Craigslist looking for an adopter.  Former owner sees dog, wants dog back, and is refused.  Oh my, how terrible. 

Maybe, maybe not.  The story as written conjures up an image of a well-loved dog enjoying a beautiful day out on the deck of a fenced back yard and then being stolen or perhaps just escaped.  Given the location of this event, it's equally likely, if not more so, that the dog was kept out back on a chain 24/7, with the bare minimum of water and shelter.  The dog may have finally broken the chain or collar, ran off, and had no desire to return.  Mind you, I don't know the facts here.  What was reported was so very scant that either scenario or even something entirely different is possible.
 

Time passed and the dog ended up in a rural shelter that regularly euthanizes.  The dog would have been held for the statutory hold period if it came in as a stray or was available immediately if it was an owner surrender.  The former owner says that she made every effort to find the dog, but I think it's a safe assumption that by the time the dog showed up in the shelter she had given up looking. 

The dog was transferred to a group that declined to give the dog back.  I don't know if that decision was based on doubts about the claim of ownership, or about the quality of the home, or other factors, but legally I don't think it matters.  The dog could have been euthanized, or the dog could have been adopted out directly from the shelter leaving the prior owner with no recourse.  Dogs are considered personal property under the law and to put this in legal terms, the shelter's adoption of the dog after compliance with the statutory hold period conveyed clear title to the dog to the individual or organization that received it.  Any prior owner's rights were terminated by operation of law.  The statutory law could be a lot more explicit than it is, and I wish it was, but that's the interpretation that most of us believe and rely upon.
 

I think this an important principle to keep in mind and to stand behind.  The law favors finality and certainty.  Imagine what would happen if someone adopted a dog from a shelter, was walking down the street with it one day and a former owner of the dog stopped them and claimed a prior and superior ownership interest in the dog.  Aside from issues of proof (lots of dogs look very much alike), the bigger problem would be that people would be hesitant to adopt from a shelter or a rescue group if they thought they could lose their dog.  Good for breeders, bad for shelter dogs.

I don't know what factual issues exist in this particular case, but I've had a couple experiences with somewhat similar situations.  I once had a pretty little golden retriever foster.  I posted her picture on Petfinder and received a hysterical email claiming that I had her dog and demanding that I return it.  She was absolutely certain; I was not.  Later I had a phone call from her pig of a husband who attempted to bully and intimidate me into giving them the dog.  The dog didn't come from this area but they didn't want to listen to facts, they just wanted the dog.  I kept asking for identifying information about the dog (sorry, but a rabies certificate doesn't cut it), and finally got the asshole to say that "yes, of course, their dog was spayed."  While I'm glad to know that they had spayed their dog, I was particularly glad in this case because my little foster girl had just been spayed that day and had been found to be unsprayed and very pregnant.  I don't believe in miracle conceptions so that was the end of that discussion.


I once had a foster named King, who appeared to be a Swiss Mountain Dog or mix thereof.  I had pulled him from a local kill shelter.  He had been an owner surrender, I believe.  One day at an adoption event in Charlottesville a woman came by with several kids in tow and said that King was her dog, her kids missed him and wanted him back, blah, blah, blah, sob, etc.  She went on to say that she had given up the dog when she had to move or something and was told that they would find someone to hold the dog who would give it back to her whenever she wanted.  Now, I believed that it had been her dog, but the rest of her story was just plain stupid.  I told her she could fill out an application if she wanted, and she did, but the dog's reaction to her and her spawn told me to throw the application in the trash.  This normally friendly, outgoing dog who loved everyone, turned his back on that woman and her kids and curled up in the back of his crate to get as far away from them as possible.  I adopted him out to a good home instead.

VGSR has had two incidents in recently memory where we had pulled a dog from a shelter and then a prior owner showed up to claim the dog.  While these situations naturally provoke a certain amount of sympathy, I think I'd be more sympathetic towards an adopter who took in an abandoned, neglected, or abused dog and gave it a good home than I would be towards a prior owner whose actions resulted in the dog's life being put at risk in a kill shelter.  A common scenario is when a dog is seized when the owner goes to jail.  The dog's time is up before the owner's but when the owner gets out he comes looking for the dog.  When I've taken dogs from that sort of situation we generally don't post them online and find the dog a home quietly, and trust that the shelter won't disclose where the dog went when the owner gets out of jail and comes looking. 

One easy lesson to take away from all of this is to microchip your dog.  That would at least eliminate fact disputes and would prevent most of these situations from arising in the first place.