SACRAMENTO — A story that was supposed to be about a stolen dog at the beginning of the day had a happy reunion at the end of it.
Jamie Anderson lost Olive earlier this week when the little Yorkie slipped out a wooden gate at their home.
A woman found Olive safe, and took the dog to the Bradshaw Animal shelter to turn her in. Late for a college class, the woman handed Olive to another woman wearing scrubs who had asked if she needed help.
Anderson was notified that Olive was at the shelter but by the time she got there, her dog was gone.
“Devastated,” Anderson said. “I was worried.”
Staff at the shelter have heard of other people waiting outside shelters to purposely get their hands on pure-breds and other dogs.
“They might be able to sell on Craigslist or somewhere else,” Sacramento County Animal Care Director Dave Dickinson said. “People doing illegal activities with pit bulls and other dogs that they use for fighting. They need bait dogs basically that they don’t care about. And they don’t care if they get injured or killed.”
Dickinson says the woman seen on surveillance walking away with Olive lost her own Yorkie a few months ago, and fully intended to go through the process of adopting Olive but wanted to take her home first.
“She just didn’t want to go to through that hassle, so she decided to keep it,” he said.
The man who was with the woman that took Olive brought the dog back because it was the right thing to do..
For Anderson, that means everything.
“I got her as an emotional support dog because I had just lost my mom,” she said.
