The Saturday after Winston was dumped, it wasn’t long before we were inundated with calls saying that this dog would be ideal for their home circumstances and it was a tough choice for us to turn so many people away.

As an aside to this story, this case highlights a major issue in that some people are only interested in near pedigree or look-alike- pedigree dogs. If we had as many callers for the many other dogs we have at the shelter awaiting adoption, we would not now have over 80.

Winston was adopted by someone we knew quite a bit about and trusted them. The details of the adoption contract and acceptance of responsibility were clear.

We were quite confident that Winston was going to someone who had experience training and handling an energetic, rambunctious dog.

Sadly, we were wrong.

The first evening he was in his new home, he was left unattended in a yard with a fence not nearly high enough to contain him. His new owner came home to find Winston gone. Normally, this is when the Care for Dogs team would rally and scour the immediate and surrounding areas for any sightings of the runaway dog, hoping to find them before they became so frantic and scared, putting themselves in danger of being hit by traffic, falling into roadside holes or becoming the prey of meat market dog catchers.

But we didn’t. We could not! Because the owner never called us.

One of our volunteers, the one whose garden Winston was dumped in the previous week, ran into the adopting “owner” the Friday after (6 days after the adoption), completely expecting to hear good reports of how Winston was adapting, since all week we hadn’t heard otherwise. When they said that Winston had run off the Saturday before, the volunteer was heartbroken.

A search was made of the surrounding area but in view of the length of elapsed time, Winston could be anywhere.

In hindsight, we challenge our decisions in cases like this and we beat ourselves up terribly. The impact of this type of disappointment cannot be measured but needless to say, we will all be reviewing our opinions of the competence of people wishing to adopt a dog.

View location of where Winston was last seen with Google Maps here …