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to steal someones dog?
NakedZergling
A more apocalyptic post apocalypse Portland OregonRegistered User regular
A more apocalyptic post apocalypse Portland OregonRegistered User regular
So today i was driving to my parents house with my baby of 6 months. On the way there, only a few blocks from my parents house i saw a beautiful dog chilling on the side of the road. I got to my parents house and dropped some stuff off, let grandpa see the baby, had a cup of coffee and got on my way. I was there maybe an hour or so. When leaving i see the same dog maybe 1/2 mile from where i saw him before, but this time walking in the road. I pull over, and the dog wags his tail, and comes over to me. He was a German mix, and i got out and pat him. He had a collar but no tags. He looked really thin and cold as it was 23 degrees out. I know they have fur, but i don't know what temperatures dogs can sustain or for how long.
I loaded him up in my car and we drove around for about 40 min and i was knocking on doors. Finally i found the house. The owner is a man in his late 60's early 70's with another small dog in the house.
The owner said that the big dog get out and even last month someone picked him up and brought him to the local shelter. I said the dog should probably have a tag on him then, and the man said "Nah, he doesn't like em"
Between this carelessness of not tagging his dog (even after he got taken to the shelter), leaving him out in 23 degree weather for at LEAST an hour, and the fact he was very skinny, Im seriously considering taking him and keeping him the next time i see him outside 1/2 a mile from home in 20 degree weather.
also the dog didn't want to leave my car, maybe because he was warm, but he REALLY seemed to like me.
Does this make me a terrible person for considering this?
Morally i'm fine with it, but i've gotten a mixed bag of reactions from others. Clearly the shelter knows te condition of the dog and deemed it ok for the owner to take him back, but i question how much the owner cares leaving him out and not even getting him tags.
thoughts? Is it ok to take this dog if i see him out in below freezing weather?
I loaded him up in my car and we drove around for about 40 min and i was knocking on doors. Finally i found the house. The owner is a man in his late 60's early 70's with another small dog in the house.
The owner said that the big dog get out and even last month someone picked him up and brought him to the local shelter. I said the dog should probably have a tag on him then, and the man said "Nah, he doesn't like em"
Between this carelessness of not tagging his dog (even after he got taken to the shelter), leaving him out in 23 degree weather for at LEAST an hour, and the fact he was very skinny, Im seriously considering taking him and keeping him the next time i see him outside 1/2 a mile from home in 20 degree weather.
also the dog didn't want to leave my car, maybe because he was warm, but he REALLY seemed to like me.
Does this make me a terrible person for considering this?
Morally i'm fine with it, but i've gotten a mixed bag of reactions from others. Clearly the shelter knows te condition of the dog and deemed it ok for the owner to take him back, but i question how much the owner cares leaving him out and not even getting him tags.
thoughts? Is it ok to take this dog if i see him out in below freezing weather?
NakedZergling on
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Do not steal the man's dog. It's his dog. As far as I know, animals count as property under the law. He may be a jackass but you should not take the matter into your own hands, given that that is illegal.
Legally, all you can do is call the local law enforcement who deal with animal abuse and get the dog taken away, then adopt it. Anything else is theft and you would be prosecuted.
Your local police probably handle animal control, or else will point you to whatever organization does in your area. Personally, I'd call them (non-emergency, obviously) and explain the situation, and let them handle it.
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I know this seems like silly goosery, but I'm being honest.
edit: or buy the dog. yeah that seems waay better.
I'm considering just going to the guys house with tags and food, and a few hundred bucks and saying, "Either keep your dog inside, put a tag on him when he's out, and feed him better, or i'm calling animal control. Or heres $300 let me have him"
Call animal control if you're concerned.
call animal control. if they take him to the shelter, than you can adopt him from the shelter.
or, offer to buy the dog. but that's still kind of a dick move and likely to get you shot or something.
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There are dogs (ours being one of them) that are perfectly happy sitting out in a foot of snow and below freezing weather for hours on end.
german shepherd mix
Oh, and don't steal the dog. Either call it in (best choice) or, if we lived in TV land, try and persuade the owner to let you take the dog off his hands (your kid fell in love guilt trip should be effective).
break up with the dog.
But yeah, its not your dog to take. Animals are still property.
Then one of my dads friends said they saw some people in a house behind us with a dog very similar to ours. My dad went right over there and sure enough, there she was. Only they were refusing to give the dog back. The man who answered the door said his kids were already attached to her and he wasn't going to take the dog away from them. She was tagged (but the tags had "vanished") and tattooed. Ownership was not in question here. My dad tried to reason with the man but he ended up telling us we'd have to take this matter to the law if we wanted her back.
So, my dad turned around, went home and put on his uniform (he was a police officer) and walked right back, badge in hand. Our dog was promptly returned to us.
Moral of the story? You shouldn't take someone's dog. You really don't know the circumstances... and most dogs escape from time to time. The man is old, he probably just can't keep up with the dog and knows he'll come back anyway. This is the case with my current dog. He sometimes gets away and my mom simply can't chase him. If I'm not at home, then he either has to come back on his own or get returned to us.
If abuse is undeniably obvious, then call animal services. You could definitely adopt it afterwards, animal services usually looks favourably upon people who report abuse. You could try buying the dog if you really think you'd be a better owner, but I'm willing to bet that the man is actually attached to the dog.
this is the guy i'm talking about
On the other hand, if the dog seems to be actively trying to re-home himself, well then there's your answer. It's not "theft" in any legitimate moral sense if the dog doesn't want to live with a neglectful owner. Note that I say moral sense, and not legal sense, since it would sill legally be theft.
Signs that an animal is trying to re-home itself vice simply wandering (which male dogs, particularly un-neutered male dogs do love to do):
Unwillingness or apparent discomfort/sadness at being returned home
Obvious desire to go inside/be let inside a home other than his own
Begging for food from strangers
Police and animal control probably vary from place to place, but in my experiences enlisting their assistance with stray or wandering animals doesn't usually end well for the animal.
If you want to take direct action: Get him a collar with a flush tag that doesn't dangle? They must make those.
[Edit] I would allow (at least initially) that the owner may love the hell out of that dog, and just be stupid, lazy, or short sighted; but well meaning in general. A wandering dog without a tag runs the possibility of being put in a shelter and put down before the owner can find and collect him. I don't know what happens to an unclaimed dog that gets hit by a car, but I don't imagine it's a scenario the owner would like.
If you have a moral problem with the way he's treated, animal services, the ASPCA and a variety of other groups are all set up for exactly that reason.
The OP said the dog had the collar but no tags. The owner said the dog doesn't like anything hanging from his collar
I think the only thing you can do right now is call animal control or your local shelter/SPCA to ask for their opinion. Unfortunately, there's not much else you can do and I think you know stealing him isn't the right course of action, despite your good intentions. Getting the proper people involved is the way to do it
Depends on the mix.
I had a german shepard/black lab mix growing up and she was the sweetest dog you'd ever know. But if she felt like you were threatening me, my sisters, or my parents? Those ears sprang up and those lips curled and she would let you know that you were scaring her.
She only bit any of us like twice (aside from playfully grabbing us in our snow suits, when we were roughhousing anyway and she didn't hurt us) and both times were when we were in our teens and she was on her way out.
Besides, Shepards are police dogs. They don't come much more loyal than German Shepards.
As for the matter at home: If you absolutely must have the dog the next time you see it, ask the man. If he refuses, offer to pay. If he still refuses, be on your way, but warn him that if you see the dog out and about again, you won't bother rescuing it, you'll simply call Animal Control. They won't hurt the dog (and make clear you don't intend it as revenge. Just that you can't bear to part with the dog a third time), and they'll likely tell the man that if he cannot care for it, they'll have to find a home for it.
The man might not be neglectful. This dog might be his last friend in the world, but he knows it'll come back. I know my Shepard mix LOVED the snow, so it's not unlikely he was just out roaming around and got out.
We have wildly different morals.
To me a dog is not, can never, ever be the same thing as a wrist watch or a door knob.
It takes some real neglect to make a dog not want to live with it's owner.
-edit-
Also, just because the guy is offended doesn't make it the wrong thing to do. My neighbor acquired one of her dogs exactly like that, by asking the owner if she could have the dog, since the dog clearly wanted to live with her and not him.
He was offended. And after a few weeks of the dog continually getting lose and running to my neighbors backyard so it could get some fucking attention (because the owner paid it absolutely none) and my neighbor persistently asking the guy to surrender ownership of the dog to her, he finally did just that.
Offering to buy the dog is perfectly reasonable. The guy may want the cash, or he may be offended, but either way all he needs to do is say no. If he says no, you drop it.
To be fair, I never advised theft of the dog. I talked about the differences in behavior between a wandering animal and an animal attempting to re-home itself. And I think it's useful advice because it could help the OP decide how strongly he feels about needing to act at all in this situation.
I'll repeat my actual advice which was:
If you see the dog wandering again, take it home again, tell the guy you really like his dog, and ask him if you could have it. I wouldn't bring money into it unless you feel like that is going to make the difference.
i was confused by this too. He had a collar, but no tags.
...the fuck are you talking about? Unless it's a husky breed, 23F is absolutely cold for a dog.
'
And another vote for "don't steal the dog." As others have said, return him again and hint that you'd like to have the dog. But as a word of warning, German Shepherds don't typically do well with small children and have a tendency to be a little neurotic.
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Anecdotal, but my family had a German Shepard when I was a very small child and it was a fantastic dog (from what I can remember of it).
Don't listen to the people saying call animal control. What happens when it gets impounded and noone gets it? It gets euthanized in a few months? Fuck that.
If they decide it's being abused and take it to the pound, the OP is perfectly capable of going there and getting it themselves.
Not at all true.
There are many breeds of dog capable of sub freezing exposure with little to no issue for prolonged periods of time.
I read somewhere that some dog sledders are starting to use German Shepherds as the lead dog in front of their Huskys. 23F probably isn't that big a deal to a German Shepherd that's acclimated to being outside.
Stealing it is a crime. You shouldn't commit crimes.
However, police have better things to do than to investigate a stolen dog.
In any case, letting a dog wander about in the cold != abuse. At most, you know that the owner was violating leash laws (if there are any). I would hesitate to deprive an owner of its pet unless I had real proof he was abusing it.
No, what happens is the OP is allowed to adopt it. The dog doesn't get Renditioned to the middle of nowhere. They would just say "I will adopt this dog."
Re German Shephards with children: There are no problem dog breeds. There are problem owners. Being that breed of dog doesn't mean it'll bite a face off. With good training and care, no dog is a danger. Aggression and instincts can be overcome by adequate training. A traumatized dog is a much higher risk though so I hope the dog is not being abused.
So you shouldn't let your child pet a random poodle OR a random doberman. Either could be poorly trained or abused.
Of course, every dog is different. I have a shepherd mix (probably husky, due to parti-colored eyes) and he has distinct aggressive tendencies that would make me hesitant to allow contact with a child in even the best of circumstances.
Fortunately animal control does not.