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Dog theft in the news: Is dognapping on the rise?
By Kim Campbell Thornton
July 27, 2008
Gina, ask and ye shall receive. I’ve been looking into dog theft recently. The American Kennel Club sent out a press release in April suggesting that dog theft is on the rise, based on the number of news reports they’ve seen about it this year. More than 30, so far, compared to 10 in 2007.
Now, there’s no way of knowing whether dog theft is really on the rise. No one keeps track of how many dogs are stolen each year, and in many cases there’s no way of knowing whether the dog was really stolen or just strayed away. The Newport Beach Police Department web site has a press release about three stolen Bulldog puppies, but officer John Lewis says it’s not really a common crime in the area. The Beverly Hills cops say it doesn’t happen much there, either.
Nonetheless, based on a totally unscientific Google search, there are certainly quite a few “stolen dog” stories out there: thieves walk out with puppies from pet stores and kittens from shelters, they break into cars and homes and take dogs, or they walk off with dogs tied up outside coffee shops or stores. And then there are the people who find lost dogs and simply decide to keep or sell them, despite knowing that someone is looking for the dog (see last week’s The Ethicist in the NYT magazine).
On the rise or not, to me it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about ways to protect dogs from loss or theft and ways to get them back, and to my editors it seemed like a good commentary on the tanking economy, both subjects discussed in tomorrow’s column. Here’s a bit of a preview.
Microchipping is a given. None of the people I spoke with actually got their dogs back because of the microchip, but it’s a way to drive down the dog’s black market value, and it’s proof of ownership in the event of a dispute.
Kit Lofgren, whose 4-month-old Bernese Mountain Dog was stolen from her front yard last year, was able to access a list of Bay Area veterinarians and ask them to scan any Berner puppies brought in.
Make the theft or loss common knowledge. With the help of friends, Lofgren was able to blanket the Bay Area with flyers and posters. Friends who were driving north and to the East Coast put up flyers at every rest stop. She posted the information on lost dog web sites and Berner chat lists.
We killed his market value through exposure. There were two Berners his age that lived close to us and one of them took to wearing a sign saying ‘I’m not Kit Lofgren’s dog.’
Weed out crank calls by withholding certain identifying information. Unlike most Berners, Heikki didn’t have a lot of white on his feet. Lofgren never published any photos showing his feet, so when people called in the middle of the night claiming to have her dog, she had an easy way of knowing whether they were legit. Heikki was returned two weeks later by someone who claimed to have found him.
Barb Schaefer, whose Siberian Husky Gateway was stolen from a van in Utah and found running alongside the freeway a week later, used similar tactics in her search for him. Now when she travels with dogs, she carries a large folder with a pre-made “lost dog” flyer, a photo of each dog traveling with her, and each dog’s tattoo and microchip numbers.
I don’t count on the tattoo or microchip to get my dog back, but I count on it to be able to verify to someone that that is my dog.
Use common sense. Don’t take your dog with you on errands unless he can go inside with you (the dry cleaner and the bank, yes; Starbucks, the grocery store or Costco, no).
Don’t leave your dog alone in the car, especially if your car also contains other valuable items that might attract a thief’s attention.
Don’t answer questions about your dog’s value. I haven’t come up with a snappy response to that one yet, but I don’t care for the one that’s sometimes suggested–He’s priceless to me–since that might encourage someone to steal the dog and demand a ransom.
What’s your best advice for preventing loss or theft?
Gratuitous Cavalier blogging: I’m so excited! I finally have a dog who responds without hesitation to the Come command (not always something you can count on with a birds-on-the-brain spaniel, which is why they’re usually leashed). We were at Cavalier park day yesterday, probably the only place my dogs are
allowed to play off leash. A Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier came walking through, also off leash, and Twyla–who thinks that she is some kind of huge guard dog–took off after her, closely followed by Harper. I called Harper to come and she immediately stopped and came back to me. Yesss! The even more amazing thing is that Twyla followed her. Good girls!
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As we live in a isolated spot, I do not stress to much about theft from our property, BUT I also never leave dogs where drivers by can see them.
Prospective puppy buyers or prospective rescue adopters must provide references, numbers I can reach them at and a drivers license# and the license plate number of their vehicle before they come to visit. We never let someone over to just look at our dogs or home.
And I am going to a PO Box for doggie elated things as well.
Our cars have dark windows and the dogs generally ride crated. i actually cannot remember the last time someone noticed our dogs in the car unless we were getting them in or out
Comment by JenniferJ — July 27, 2008 @ 1:07 pm
For questions about my dog’s value, I am unsentimentally blunt: she is spayed, a show-ring failure, and has Issues that come from her nine months with her previous owner that most people wouldn’t want to deal with. No market value at all.
She’s also never unsupervised outside my house. On the two occasions in the somewhat over a year that I’ve had her that I’ve left her in the car, it was with the car locked, the alarm armed, and where I could watch the car easily during the two minutes I was inside the shop. Inside my house, if I’m out, she stays where she’s not observable from outside—even if the blinds weren’t drawn.
I honestly don’t believe that theft is really a big risk, but if you make it too easy or too attractive, you increase the risk that someone may take the bait. And small, fluffy dogs are in demand right now.
Comment by Lis — July 27, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
I do occasionally get asked how much my bulldogs are worth.
I tell people the general costs of a puppy and then tell them they will spend 100-150% of that on vet care in many cases the first two years of the dogs life. Bulldogs are not a breed for people who are allergic to their vets office. While I have worked hard to elimunate alot of the common problems seen in the breed, I guarantee that the thousands of puppymillers and BYBs have not.
I suppose without registration, a stolen bulldog puppy is still worth a thousand or so, but the value goes down with age, rapidly.
I have a retired show dog, with health clearances. he was a top ranked show dog and has produced a number one breed dog and several BIS winners.
To me of course he is priceless. He would still be priceless to me if I neutered him tomorrow.
And I’ve been offered a fair chunk of change for him on more than one occaision.
But if stolen, his reproductive value is pretty much zilch. No papers, no registerable breeding. His career, clearances etc… count for zilch. And he’s not young so if a puppymiller wanted a stud dog with no papers, why would they want an old man? He has arthritis from an injury he suffered as a puppy and needs care for that and the other issues of advancing age.
For a bulldog his age in rescue, we would charge perhaps a couple hundred dollars adoption fee. And older bulldogs are not easy to place as people know they are not a long lived breed
Comment by JenniferJ — July 27, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
When I had the Leonbergers - gorgeous, giant, well-behaved, rare dogs - I was forever being accosted by cretins who demanded to know what I paid for them. Stunning rude - like asking me how much I weigh (too much in both cases).
The nice thing about having the Kelpie is that, though she is well-behaved, she is also quite obviously mad, so no one wants her (except me!).
I do take my dogs out a lot with me, but since I’m well known locally as ‘that crazy dog trainer lady’ I’m given a fair amount of leeway in access. Also I have tinted windows, a crate with dark mesh and dogs that are trained to down-stay quietly while I am gone. They won’t even bark if you rock the car.
Comment by Janeen — July 27, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
I think it’s a huge mistake to believe that a dog’s *actual* value, which you as the owner may know, has any relationship to his *perceived* value to a casual thief.
Or in the case of the bulldog — there is such a lively market in jenyouwhine “CKC registered” English bulldogs, at jaw-dropping prices, that the fact that a stolen dog “has no papers” is utterly irrelevant. If the thief or fence wants “papers,” he can get them easily enough.
I take the opposite tack of most people here. When I park the car in the summer, the windows are all the way down, the dogs fully visible — and obviously trained to stay inside quietly. Trained dogs intimidate the pee out of bad people, at least trained BIG dogs. They don’t think “trained = docile” they think “trained = trained guard dog.” Let ‘em. When I used to drive a van with a lift-hatch, that was up and the GSDs would lie in it with their feet dangling off the bumper. No one thinks to reach inside. I have never seen it happen.
Strangers sometimes ask me what a search dog (or one of mine specifically) is worth. I tell them that they have no market value, as they can’t be sold and plugged in to a new handler, but that the courts have a history of assigning a very high value to them when someone maliciously or negligently kills or hurts one — high enough that the handler would own your house and be garnishing your wages for the rest of your life, which would be a short time, since you just killed the only dog in town that could find your corpse. And I mention the felony charges for harming or interfering with a SAR dog in PA.
I think the best insurance against theft at home is good relations with the neighbors.
My guys are all microchipped, for positive ID purposes. It’s also a good idea to keep a chart of the dog’s distinguishing features, some of which may not be obvious — a line sketch of a dog, with annotations of scars, dewclaws, etc. is good to have filed away. One of my guys has scarring from an old hematoma, another had her front dewks removed — things like that.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 27, 2008 @ 9:34 pm
I take the opposite tack of most people here. When I park the car in the summer, the windows are all the way down, the dogs fully visible — and obviously trained to stay inside quietly. Trained dogs intimidate the pee out of bad people, at least trained BIG dogs. They don’t think “trained = docile” they think “trained = trained guard dog.” Let ‘em. When I used to drive a van with a lift-hatch, that was up and the GSDs would lie in it with their feet dangling off the bumper. No one thinks to reach inside. I have never seen it happen.
Don’t try this trick with toy breed dogs. Well-trained toy breed dogs don’t intimidate anyone who isn’t phobic about dogs.
Comment by Lis — July 28, 2008 @ 3:37 am
I don’t think it’s wise to focus on a dog’s worth as a breeder. Even a spayed or neutered mutt can make a quick buck in the right (or wrong, really) hands.
I think that making sure neighbors know, and like (or at least don’t mind), your pets (and you, for that matter) is important.
Granted, I’m in the middle of suburbia, where we all sort of watch each other’s backs anyway, perhaps it’s different in really urban or rural areas.
Comment by Christine — July 28, 2008 @ 7:12 am
There is the perceived value to a thief, and what they would actually get trying to pawn off a stolen dog.
In the case of my dog mentioned above, the point I was trying to convey was that although he is technically the most “valuable” dog I have, a thief breaking into my home to steal dogs would probably be far more attracted to my young teenage male or my two year old female as they would be more valuable with false paperwork or even none for breeding purposes. The old man is not going to be as desirable as a young dog who could breed for many more years.
That being said, bulldogs are commonly stolen by people who just decide they want a bulldog and don’t want to pay. I advise bulldog owners (and all dog owners for that matter) not to leave dogs where they are easily visible from a public street. My dogs are IN when I am OUT.
I honestly cannot remember the last time there was a “found dog” held for ransom in our breed, at least whose story makes the rounds. but I certainly know it happens.
And of course any puppy is going to be marketable
Comment by JenniferJ — July 28, 2008 @ 9:53 am
I’ve written articles on the many dangers of leaving dogs unsupervised outside the home (and with children), not just theft.
I have to say, it’s not a burden, not a chore, not even an issue for me. If my Great Dane is outside in my yard (front or back), I’m out there with her. It’s not even a question. (In the process of supervising her, I can water her pee spots and immediately remove any feces, so my lawn is beautifully lush, pristine, and ready for barefeet!)
I have few concerns about theft & other acts by malevolent humans, or any bad behaviour from my dog. For me, a 30-year dog training veteran, it’s simply the right thing to do. I sometimes point out that dogs are said to have the mental capacity of a 2-3-year-old child. There would be no excuse for leaving a toddler in the yard unsupervised. For remarkably similar reasons, it’s generally not a good idea for dogs, either.
Of course, I’m not fanatical. Each person’s situation is unique, and I could arguably leave my very well-trained dog alone in my yard (front or back) for hours, even if I drove away, and have virtually zero concerns of her not dutifully being where I left her when I returned. Very low crime rate. Rural community of concerned neighbours. Dog trained not to leave property (or be a nuisance). But still, for her safety and security, I supervise. …Always.
While the Pet Conncetion blog is read by mostly responsible dog owners, I have to say, especially given many years of dog bite research, as well as decades working in animal welfare, the majority of people who leave their dogs unsupervised outside the home, especially for long periods, tend to be on the irresponsible side. Their dogs are often not well-trained. They aren’t too concerned if their dogs make themselves a nuisance in the community while out there, unsupervised. They talk a big game after their unsupervised pets escape, are stolen, are poisoned, or bite someone. But it never seems to occur to them that proper supervision would have prevented it all.
Comment by Marjorie — July 28, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
I have two hunting dogs, and a third Rott, and must say that being with the hunting dogs in the back yard makes no difference. Both hunting dogs can easily jump the fence, and would gleefully do so even if I were standing next to them. Despite the dog trainer advising against it, I used a shock collar and they broke the habit nearly immediately.
Now they can stay outside most days when the weather permits, running and sniffing and trying to climb the tree. I am not sure if they are unsupervised, I can see them from my office window, and I have a half dozen closed circuit cameras which help me keep a watch. But, I can work while they do their own form of work, rather than sleeping all day.
As with most pet things, I would be careful of making generalizations. I have little respect for the trainer who advised against a shock collar for the hunting dogs, which only took a few shocks to fully train them, and the same trainer advised against ever leaving the dogs outside without me in the yard also. Both flat wrong, for us. Father knows best.
Comment by Erich Riesenberg — July 29, 2008 @ 4:45 am