Owner who spent 4 years searching for dog sues family who adopted him
A MOTHER who spent four years looking for her missing pedigree dog is suing the family who found and kept him.
Tracy Minor, 45, was overjoyed when she received an unexpected call to say her lost pet Mickey had been found.
But her relief turned to fresh anguish after it emerged that a second family had found and adopted the Lhasa Apso – and the council returned Mickey to them.
Mrs Minor says the decision ‘broke her heart for a second time’ and is now going to court in a bid to win back her pet.
Mickey was microchipped and Mrs Minor believes his new family did not do enough by law to try to track down his owner.
The make-up artist paid £500 for the dog when he was just an eight-week-old puppy in 2007. But he went missing in 2011 while staying at her ex-husband’s house in Nottingham with her daughter Georgia.
Despite putting up posters, scouring the streets and notifying local dog kennels and police, she could not track him down.
Then last November, Mrs Minor and Georgia, 11, were delighted when a Nottingham kennel called to tell them Mickey had been found wandering in the street.
Council officials had scanned the dog and traced his owner through his microchip.
But a short while later, the dog warden phoned back to say somebody else was claiming Mickey as theirs and that this family would be keeping him until the issue was resolved.
Mrs Minor said: ‘I got my dog microchipped and registered when I got him and did everything I could to find him. But the people who found him didn’t report Mickey to the authorities as they were meant to.
‘I am baffled by the council decision. What’s the point of having dogs microchipped if people just ignore the system?’
It transpired that Mickey was found in 2011 by an uncle of the new owner, Teresa Moore, who gave him to her two years ago.
Mrs Minor, who lives in Derby, has instructed lawyers to pursue the matter in the civil court. Legally, a lost dog must be returned to its owner if known, or reported to the local authority – which the council involved confirmed Mickey was not.
A spokesman for Gedling Borough Council in Nottingham added: ‘Based on the welfare of the animal, we made a decision to return it to the person who could reasonably show that they were the most recent owner ... The ownership of the dog is now a civil matter between the people involved.’
Mrs Moore, 46, of Nottingham, would not comment yesterday other than to say the dog’s ownership was ‘in dispute’.