ALAS, POOR YORKIE
Suit vs. Wag in new dog-death mystery
Beleaguered dog-walking app Wag — whose handlers have lost at least 15 pets, often with fatal consequences — has another dead-pooch controversy on its hands.
Angela Composto, a 52-yearold Long Island native, told The Post she used the service last month to hire a walker for her 8-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, Bella, and 3-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Chloe — and the Yorkie ended up dead.
“I couldn’t understand how a little dog goes out on a walk and comes back dead,” she said.
Composto, who now lives in Miramar, Fla., said she hired the dog-walker, only known as Hannah, through the app on Oct. 20 while she was out of town.
Footage from Composto’s home surveillance system shows Hannah picking up the pooches from the house around 7:30 a.m. and returning at 8:18 a.m. with Chloe on a leash — and a limp Bella in her arms.
As required after a walk, the Wag worker sent an update through the app — in this case, a photo of both dogs with their tongues out and tails wagging, with Hannah adding that the stroll was over and went “great.”
The walker did note that Bella “took a fall” after Chloe chased a bird but said she put both dogs in their crates and would “stay a while to make sure [Bella’s] ok,” a screenshot of the exchange shows.
Composto then got a call from Wag around 9:30 a.m. reiterating the “fall’’ and what Hannah had told her, according to the dog owner and a New York lawyer she is now consulting with, Susan Chana Lask.
That’s when the homeowner checked her security camera remotely and saw that Hannah had left the home at 8:24 a.m., meaning she stayed around for only six minutes, Composto said.
The walker then spent the next six minutes pacing around the driveway talking on her phone before heading off, Composto said.
Wag contacted Hannah — who claimed that Bella may have gotten winded — and the company dispatched another walker to check on the pup, according to Composto.
The second walker arrived around 10:17 a.m. — and found Bella dead in her crate, Composto said.
“I wanted to scream, and I burst out crying. I couldn’t even breath,” Composto said.
“I can’t get it out of my mind that [Hannah] possibly could’ve saved [Bella] . . . and I’ll never know if Bella was alive and just needed to get to a vet . . . or if she was already dead,” she added.
Composto had a necropsy performed on Bella, and says the dog was found to have suffered trauma to the left side of her skull and her leg, although her exact cause of death was unclear.
“All I have is ashes and no answers,” Composto said, adding that she plans to file a lawsuit against Wag.
Bella is at least the 15th dog in Wag’s care that has been lost or killed since 2015, according to records kept by The Post.
One recent case involved a Yorkie named Whiskey who was killed while out with a Wag walker in Manhattan.
The dog-walker claimed that the pooch slipped from its harness and ran into traffic June 13, but cops allegedly told Whiskey’s owners that he had no collar on him when he was taken out.
Surveillance video showed the walker later slipping into the owners’ home to take the forgotten collar to “cover his tracks,’’ a class-action lawsuit against Wag charges.
Wag said in a statement about Composto’s dog that it had offered her “support and [to] address . . . concerns,” and that Hannah has been removed from the platform.
Composto said the app asked her to send her vet expenses to them, but that she cut off communication and is now looking for a lawyer in Florida.