Dog-gone happy ending
John Heslop enjoyed his first full day Monday with his dogs, Mr. Bigs and Arrow, since they were stolen from outside a grocery store over the weekend.
Mr. Bigs, a 14-year-old wolfcoyote cross and Arrow, a German shepherd mix, just aren’t acting like themselves yet, said Heslop.
The two pets went missing Saturday evening after Heslop tied them to a railing outside the Shelbourne Street Save-on-Foods.
The dogs are “weirded out” after their time away, Heslop said.
“They’re just not behaving like they should,” he said. “They’re not as giggly and happy as they usually are.”
He said he popped into the store for less than 10 minutes and was shocked to discover his dogs had been taken.
“I just couldn’t believe it. You just don’t expect it to happen.”
Heslop said he regularly ties his dogs outside stores when he is shopping — he even made a quick trip to the store Monday to get cream for his coffee, but used a hard-to-untie knot to secure the dogs.
On Saturday, he remembers a man petting the dogs just as he was going inside.
“I should have listened to my guts,’ ” he said. “Something told me there was something wrong with this character.”
Thanks to the Saanich police and the public, Mr. Bigs and Arrow were both back home in less than a day.
“The cops were so good,” Heslop said. “They were right on it. They really acted like they gave a damn.”
He said the police even called him at midnight to see if it was OK to put information on social media. “I said: ‘Whatever you think will work, go for it.’ ”
University of Victoria security reported checking on a man walking two dogs earlier in the evening, but at the time they were unaware of the theft.
Police now believe it was the man who took the dogs.
Sunday about 8 a.m. the police called Heslop again and gave him the number of a man — by coincidence part of the group Find Lost and Escaped Dogs — who had reported finding a dog that turned out to be Mr. Bigs.
“Apparently, the dog came to him in darkness. Here this dog comes right up to him because I imagine he was cold, he was hungry,” Heslop said.
About noon Sunday, Arrow was spotted tied up outside UVic’s MacLaurin Building and was soon returned.
Saanich police Staff Sgt. Chris Horsley said instances of stolen pets are “pretty rare,” and becoming even less common because many pets are tattooed or have microchips for identification.
Tying a dog outside a store is not unusual, he said, but sometimes people think they are doing the right thing by taking the animal.
“They think that the dog’s been neglected, abandoned or somehow suffering, and usually they’ll phone an authority, whether it’s the SPCA or the police.”