EDITOR – We live in an apartment house in Glen Anil and there are three lots of people living there, and the owner is overseas.
The owner has a boxer which we all look after and love to bits. As we all work with kids at school, we only found out in the evening, after Guy Fawkes, that ‘our’ beloved pet was missing.
We checked with the SPCA, God bless them, on Thursday and they advised us that people had found a dog like ours and gave us their contact details.
My wife made contact with them yesterday and it was confirmed that it was ‘our’ dog. We were so relieved that these people had gone to these lengths. My wife made further contact with them and she sensed that something had changed. They were now saying their daughter was driving along uMhlanga Rocks Drive, near Sunningdale Spar in early hours of Wednesday morning, and Gina, our dog, ran out into the road and she swerved out of the way and hit the pavement and damaged her tyre, when she stopped Gina jumped into her car and she drove home with the tyre in that condition.
The mother then advised that would we compensate them for the damage. We were so excited that Gina was safe. Then came the drama, when one of the people staying in the house went to pick Gina up, they refused to let her go until we paid them R900 for the tyre.
She was now holding our pet to ransom. She started hinting along the lines that we were bad owners because it took so long to realise Gina was missing, which is not the case as we were all gone early in the morning and Gina generally is still asleep as we never see her in the mornings.
We asked them if they had reported the incident to the police (which they had not) and also asked if they could give us a receipt for the replaced tyre. We got a receipt that was generally blanked out and all that was visible was the cost, no date/registration but it did mention that it was pothole damage. Now when you hit a pavement at 60km/hr there is going to be a lot more damage than just a damaged tyre. She turned actually very ugly about the incident. Anyway we scrapped together R800 and told her we were on our way.
If the demands had not been made we would surely have remained in contact with them in order to compensate them for the tyre, but the way in which she conducted herself with the demands and refusing to give us our dog back was shameful in the least.
What does one do in these situations, as in one hand you have a good Samaritan and then on the other, a Dognapper?
Disappointed
Glen Anil
