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A doggie dilemma: Who owns Duke?
By JORGE SANCHEZ, Times Staff Writer
Duke, a 4-month-old golden Labrador, was brought to the shelter Feb. 22 and was adopted Feb. 28, county records showed. The dog was photographed by a Citrus Times photographer on Feb. 28 shortly before the adoption as part of the newspaper's Adopt-A-Pet feature. That much is clear. What occurred during Duke's stay at the shelter, however, is more complicated. Duke's shelter ID card lists him as a golden Lab puppy, and records show he was found wandering on Tamarisk Avenue in Beverly Hills. Margaret Stevenson, the dog's owner, said she called the animal shelter daily from Feb. 24 to 28 and gave essentially the same description and the location where Duke was lost, Tamarisk Avenue, only to be told that no dog matching the description was at the shelter. Xan Rawls, the animal control director, said it is the department's policy not to respond to such telephone inquiries. She said she had spoken to most employees and volunteers who were on duty during the time in question and none remembered fielding such calls. "Because people use different terms in describing their dogs, and because a dog may travel a long way after it leaves, we very rarely answer telephone inquiries as to whether a dog is here," Rawls said. "Instead, we instruct people to come here and look for themselves." Stevenson said she and a worker from animal control toured the kennels where the stray dogs are held on Feb. 25. They didn't see Duke. According to Rawls, the dog already had been there three days. "There's no way," Stevenson said. "I looked in every cage, and there was an animal control worker there with me, and she didn't see it, either." Rawls said she didn't know how two people could have walked past the dog and failed to notice him or his picture on the cage door, or how other workers who cleaned the cage and transferred Duke from one cage to another could have not identified Duke as the dog Stevenson was seeking. "I honestly don't know how that could have happened," she said. Stevenson also published classified ads in the Times and the Citrus County Chronicle describing Duke under the "lost dogs" section. The dog was adopted by a family, and Rawls said the process cannot be undone. The adoption took place Feb. 28, the first day Duke was eligible for adoption. According to animal control rules, lost animals must be held at least five days before they can be adopted. "It was a legal adoption," Rawls said. "As a courtesy to Mrs. Stevenson, I called the family and asked if they'd be willing to return the dog. They said their children had already fallen in love with it, and they didn't want to return it. At this point, there's nothing that can be done." Duke was a Christmas present to David Stevenson, age 2, who is Stevenson's grandson. She said the boy is heartbroken over the dog's disappearance. "I just can't understand with all the calls I made, with the visit to the shelter and the newspaper ads I took out, why someone at animal control couldn't have put it all together and reunited me with Duke," Stevenson said. Before he made his escape by dashing out the partially open door of Stevenson's home, Duke had wriggled out of his collar. He did not have a microchip. The microchip, about the size of a grain of rice, is typically implanted above the pet's shoulder. It can be read with a scanner and contains information about the dog's owner and its veterinarian. The process costs about $30. "As bad as I feel for Mrs. Stevenson, and I do feel bad for her and her grandson, this whole thing could have been avoided if she had put a proper collar on her dog or had a microchip implanted," Rawls said. -- Jorge Sanchez can be reached at 860-7313 or sanchez@sptimes.com
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