Rescue centre refuses to return lost dog to owner after selling it to a new home

An animal rescue centre has refused to return a lost dog to the woman who owned it for 11 years after staff sold it on to another family. Read More....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...-new-home.html

thats a shame and as for Michael Quinlan chairman of the rescue, there should be a clause in the contract that the new owners signed stating something like if within the month the dogs original owner shows up they have to hand the dog back and can be given a refund or help to find them a new dog or at least thats what happens up here

Ive heard of this sort of thing happening before. Very sad for all concerned

Resue centres have to hold a dog for 7 days if its a council contract for rescue. Therefore why did it take the original owner longer before visiting the rescue centre.


That link is out of date by the way
Tumbleweed

When I worked in the solicitors we defended a man who's dog was lost, took to the dogs home, rehomed, but he wasn't allowed him back. What did they do... Offer compensation. I'm sorry but compensation can't replace a loved family pet!

I'm afraid I don't have a huge amount of sympathy in this case.

The little dog was not microchipped, did not have a collar & wore no form of ID. It was lost on 12th April & picked up by a dog warden on 13th April. The owner did not contact the vet for 2 weeks!! Apart from searching & calling for her dog, what else was she doing in those 2 weeks? If it were me I'd have called all local rescues, the dog warden, all vets in the area, put up posters, talked to neighbours etc. In effect done everything I could think of to find my dog. It was a little JRT so could easily be stuck in a rabbit hole, so why wait for 2 weeks?

Rescues only have to hold strays for 7 days ~ this is generally common knowledge ~ before the dog can be rehomed, so they have done nothing wrong. The new owners have done nothing wrong &neither has the Dog Warden. Frankly it was the original owner that was wrong by not ensuring that her dog was chipped & wore some ID.

I do feel sorry for the original owner & I sincerely hope that the dog is happy in it's new home. It maybe that the new owners will read the story & also feel sorry for the original owner. And perhaps if they are not too attached to the dog by now, they may decide to hand the dog back to the original owner provided she recompenses them for any costs they've incurred. But this would be at their choice ~ they are not legally obliged to, & neither is the rescue obliged to give any financial compensation.

This is my worst nightmare if my dogs every got lost, sometimes it very hard if your dog isnt microchipped to find them even if they are in a rescue.

I do think they are being a bit heartless not even telling the new owners what happened. At least give then the choice to return the dog . . .

At least dogs get 7 days there isn't hat for cats although cars protection have 14days with collar on then keep them for another 14 days
ATD x

The dog failed to return after being "let out" at lunch time. By this I assume it was let out to roam the streets for awhile. No ID, no microchip.

Working in rescue, when dogs are given to us after being found we inform the dog warden we have them, advertise locally via radio and posters as well as our website, [a social network] and irish dog lost type websites.

But there is only so long we can keep dogs at expense to our charity, so once 7 days is up the dog is vaccinated and neutered and up for rehoming. If we didn't do this we'd be full of dogs waiting for their owners to return.

It's very sad that the rescue didn't get in contact with the new owners to let them know what's happened and give them the option of contacting the previous owner or not. But at the same time they've done nothing wrong.

As others have said, I don't have too much sympathy with the original owners - they hardly tried very hard during the first few days did they?

I'm also sceptical (and not saying this happened in this case) because our local rescue knows for a fact that certain people let their dogs out before they go away on holiday - they come back 7 days (or sometimes 14 days) later and expect just to pick the dog up from the shelter. They don't pay any fees either (the shelter have tried suing before and were offered 50p a week which was never kept up and the whole process took more time and costs than it was worth).

I do think I would have contacted the new owners though to see what they thought. I know with my first rescue, he was such a gorgeous boy that I couldn't believe someone wasn't looking for him....and though it would have upset me to hand him back, if I'd only had him a couple of weeks and I knew he was going back to the people who had loved him for 11 years, I would have given him back. (not the case with the other 2 as I knew they had been badly treated).