Barbie, the little white Chihauhau who went missing a week ago, has been reunited with her human. As Gossips heard the story, Barbie was found on Columbia Street, not far from where she escaped from a fenced yard. The woman who found Barbie took her home to Stuyvesant Falls and spent the past week trying to locate Barbie's rightful human. She succeeded in doing that today--exactly how is not clear--and Barbie and her ecstatic human were reunited at about 5 p.m. today in front of the Hudson train station.
This is great news, Carole. But it begs the question: what's the reason for dog collars and dog registrations? Shouldn't owner info be on those tags? Or perhaps Barbie, being in the backyard at the time of escape was without such i.d.
ReplyDeleteYaaayyy!
ReplyDelete(When the celebrating settles down, it might be useful -- to spare the next lost-pet-owner a week of agony -- to find out how the person who found Barbie finally figured out where she belonged, and what might have sped up the search.
These lost pet dramas seem to happen pretty often around here; every email list I'm on is full of people losing or finding animals without collars. It almost makes one think there ought to be a central county site for reporting them lost or found, to which the authorities/Humane Society/etc. could refer pet owners and finders.
--S.
Peter--Presumably, when Barbie went missing, she wasn't wearing a collar. I found this surprising until I heard from someone, who I always thought was a very conscientious pet owner, that her dog doesn't wear his collar--with all his ID tags--when he is in her fenced backyard. Barbie escaped from a fenced backyard.
ReplyDeleteSince Barbie seems not to have been wearing a collar when she went missing, she might have had a microchip, but the woman who found her apparently never took her anywhere (the Humane Society, for example) where the chip could have been scanned.
Sam--The "central county site" should be the Humane Society. That should be the place where people take lost pets they find and the first place people call when their pets go missing. I don't know why this doesn't seem to be the case in Columbia County. It can't be the fee they charge for sheltering a lost pet. It is nothing compared with the reward being offered for Barbie (which the woman who found her didn't accept), and it could have saved Barbie's human a week of unimaginable anxiety.
It seems that the woman who found Barbie called the Hudson Police Department several times, and even though Barbie's human had reported her missing to the HPD, the person who answered the phone at the HPD said they knew nothing about a lost Chihauhau.
I think the woman who found Barbie probably came back to Hudson this weekend and saw one of the "Lost Dog" posters that are all over Warren Street, or maybe someone she knew did.
Oh thank goodness. I felt so bad every time I walked around and saw her photos posted everywhere.
ReplyDeleteA friend of the woman who found Barbie did see a poster in town and told her friend about it. The finder had reported it to the Hudson Police Station and filled out a report about it! Pretty shoddy that someone files a report on a lost white Chihuahua and the owner reports it lost and calls several times and the dots don't get connected. Ay.
ReplyDeleteGood for the posters though and great for Lee and Barbie.
Lulu, who is a princess in a dog suit, wears her collar 24/7 (she changes it for the season). On her collar is one tag, with her name and our phone number. Simple. When I first put the tag on I did a bad job, and Lulu became a stealth basenji for a few hours. Then a neighbor called; she had found the tag, with the phone number on it. Easy.
ReplyDeleteJennifer,
ReplyDeleteThat's what happens when the PD spends all its patrol time in cars, with the windows closed and the air conditioning on, rather then community policing: walking the beat , getting to know the citizens (and the citizens getting to know the cops).
Ask yourself this: how many of Hudson's Finest's names do you know? How many of them know you? (Hint: if it's as the result of being arrested or filing a police report, it doesn't count.)
The fact of the matter of is, the Hudson police behave like zoo keepers: they don't interact with the animals unless there's a dust-up then they come in swinging. Go to the police HQ -- stand in the non air-conditioned lobby and wait for the disembodied voice behind the opaque glass to ask in a tone of voice that makes it clear you've interrupted his donut time if he can help you. This is indicative of all but 1 of my interactions with the HPD (I'm a lawyer -- we tend to deal w/ cops not infrequently).
I will say this, a young officer (who shall go nameless lest this adversely effect his future w/ the department) once found out a client of mine had a warrant out for him. This officer also was aware that another HPD officer disliked my client intensely and was out looking for my client to "jack him up" on the warrant. Rather than allow the game to play itself out, this young officer contacted my client to inform him of the situation; my client called me; I called the HPD and arranged for my client to turn himself in peacefully and without the sturm und drang the "hunting" cop sought to inflame. By the time the hunting cop got back to the HPD HQ, my client had been arraigned, processed and released on his own recognizance (and the charges are in the process of being dropped).
Hudson is a small city, its streets lined with sidewalks. There is no reason that I can think of why our police are not practicing community policing. If there is a reason, I'd certainly like to know it.