OH, THE WAG-ONY! NY
Dog-walk app loses 4th pooch
Screwed the pooch again. The Wag app — dubbed the Uber of dog-walking — has lost at least four pups in three years of existence, most recently a Brooklyn rescue pooch who has been missing for more than a week.
Teddy, a 4-year-old black jindo mix, escaped certain doom at a Korean meat farm and a trip halfway around the globe only to be lost in Prospect Park by one of the app’s leash jockeys, according to owner Kane Giblin.
“I was so stunned that I didn’t react, and then halfway through the call, I burst into tears — I was sobbing,” she told The Post about the Nov. 30 moment she learned the dog had escaped its leash on a Wag walker’s watch.
Since then, there have been about a dozen possible Teddy sightings in Prospect Park and adjacent nabes, but the tailwagger may be too fearful of humans to be corralled.
Wag made a “Find Teddy” Facebook page and posted photos of the missing dog— and initially Photoshopped out a Wag logo on the pooch’s bandanna.
“It was really upsetting,” Giblin said of the coverup.
Wag claims the retouching was done by an “overzealous social-media intern” and that the photo has been removed — although the image persists on the Facebook page, along with several undoctored images.
The company has also hired people to pass out fliers, issued doggy Amber Alerts through two lost-pet services, and called in a specialist to find Teddy, a spokeswoman said.
Wag, founded in 2014, lets users hire and monitor dog walkers through an app similar to Uber.
But the company has had at least two dogs go missing and another two break from their leashes and get killed by cars.
Wag reps contend that Teddy escaped because of a leash malfunction that Giblin failed to warn the company about.
Giblin says she got the leash last month and concedes she told Wag after the incident, “It’s easy to accidentally unhook a leash” — but only because she felt bad for the walker.
In 2015, Chihuahua-pug mix Duckie was hit by a car and later died after a Wag walker let him slip out of his leash in Prospect Park.
And Long Islander Mary Ellen Humphrey hounded Wag for three weeks after the company lost her dog, Buddy, eventually calling in professional pet trackers from Maine for $2,000, who got Buddy back within a day of their arrival.
“Wag spent over $20,000 on getting Buddy back,” said spokeswoman Dini Von Mueffling.
Wag walkers must take an online quiz, submit to a background check and attend an inperson orientation before being hired, according to the company’s Web site.
The quiz tests knowledge of different kinds of leashes and harnesses, and the orientation requires walkers demonstrate that knowledge on a dog dummy, the company said.