KZN ‘dognapping’ drama
FREDDIE, a Scottish terrier cross schnauzer and well known at the Saturday morning Shongweni market, has been at the centre of a dognapping drama.
The friendly canine disappeared from his home in Merrivale, near Howick. A family masquerading as patients wanting to see Freddie’s owner, a doctor of natural medicine, managed to get him out of the property and into their car last weekend.
Owners Julie-Ann Hamar and Robin Werner said that the drama started to unfold when their domestic worker, who did not wish to be named, asked: “Where’s the dog?”
“Then she saw Freddie in the car with the teenage son holding him,” said Hamar.
Thinking on her feet, the domestic worker made a note of the number plate of the vehicle as it whisked Freddie away. Instant sleuthing followed. “We tracked the car to Gillitts,” said Hamar, adding that Freddie’s story quickly spread far and wide on social media.
By the time they reached the home of the person the registration plate was linked to, there was quite a pack of people already waiting outside, including activists against dog-fighting and Barbara Patrick, the manager of Kloof SPCA, who liaised with the Hillcrest police.
Hamar said she was beside herself at thinking of her “cute, fluffy Freddie” possibly being used in dog-fighting.
“The poor woman who answered the door was horrified to find so many people at her garden gate ready to storm in.
“She told us she had sold the vehicle to someone in Howick a month ago, but he appeared not to have changed the number plates,” said Hamar.
Armed with a name and an address which was only a couple of kilometres away from Hamar’s – and Freddie’s – home, the entourage headed for an address in Merrivale Heights, accompanied by police from nearby Mpophomeni.
“We asked for the man who had bought the car. The woman who came to the door said he was in Pietermaritzburg. Then one of the guys asked if he could go to the loo. Once inside, he poked his head into various rooms and came out with Freddie.”
Hamar said the man who was supposedly in Pietermaritzburg was arrested along with the woman and their teenage son and taken into custody. Freddie went home with Hamar.
But there was a twist. According to the Howick SPCA, it has since emerged that in 2015 somebody reported a destitute family were hitch-hiking on the N3 outside Howick with a cat and a dog.
“They were pretty desperate,” recalled manager Dudu Abraham.
“But the animals were in good condition and you could see they loved them.”
Abrahams said the family agreed to let the SPCA look after them until they were ready to take them back and a local church group provided them with bus tickets to Joburg.
After keeping in touch, the woman agreed that the cat and the dog should be adopted to new homes. That’s how the pooch entered Hamar and Werner’s lives and they named him Freddie.
While it is suspected that the arrested man could be Freddie’s previous owner, Abraham, stressed they would not have been told where to find the dog was housed because such information is confidential.
Reflecting on the captors, if they were indeed Freddie’s original owners, Hamar said she could understand their love for the dog.
“But there are boundaries,” she said.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Thulani Zwane confirmed that a 47-year-old man had been arrested for theft and appeared in the Howick Magistrate’s Court on Monday.