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A frantic hunt for a missing nine-week-old puppy stolen from its foster home’s yard last week saw volunteer searchers sweep the streets of downtown Winnipeg to rescue the animal.
Debra Vandekerkhove, director of the Manitoba Animal Alliance, says a foster home reported one of their three puppies had gone missing from a playpen in a yard in the Wolseley neighbourhood early Tuesday morning.
“Initially we thought that the puppy had gotten out of the playpen and could have possibly been in the yard,” she told CBC News on Sunday. “But with the timeline that we were given, we assumed that the puppy was taken by somebody.”
Social media posts were made to find the German Shepherd-Malamute mix puppy named Brownie, which Vandekerkhove said spread quickly. On Friday, someone reached out who said they were certain they saw people with the puppy downtown.
“She asked [the people] a few questions and took a photograph and sent it to us, and then the race was on from there,” Vandekerkhove said.
“We had multiple people in vehicles going into that area, and because downtown is a lot of one-way streets, it was very difficult to try and locate these people.”
‘Very dehydrated, very scared’
Brownie’s foster parents spotted the people from the picture heading inside a duplex, before “all the volunteers circled the building and we contacted police again,” Vandekerkhove said.
Police urged the searchers to remain in their vehicles and avoid a confrontation, she said.
“We followed their instructions and they recovered the puppy for us, and they did it in 60 seconds.”
Officers who went inside the duplex found the puppy “in plain view” inside a suite, but no charges were laid, a police spokesperson told CBC News in a statement.
Winnipeg police recovered Brownie the puppy from a building downtown. (Submitted by Debra Vandekerkhove)
“They spoke with an individual, however it was not determined who stole the animal in the first place,” the spokesperson said.
Brownie is “no worse for wear,” Vandekerkhove said.
“She’s very healthy. She was very dehydrated, very scared initially, but she’s come down since then because she’s been reunited and she’s getting lots of TLC with her siblings and her new foster [parent],” she said.
“We will post them once again up for adoption so they are all available for adoption.”
Brownie was among a litter of four puppies taken into foster care from Cross Lake in northern Manitoba, Vandekerkhove said. One of the four died from a head injury, and the rest had a “very tough, rough start at life,” she said.
“It’s taken weeks to get them healthy to be put up for adoption,” she said. “Coincidentally, they had just been put up for adoption when … Brownie went missing.”
But she says it was amazing to see so many people come together to support the search for Brownie.
The lesson of the story is “don’t mess with [animal] rescue people,” Vandekerkhove said.
“Don’t mess with us because once we find out who you are. That’s it, boy. We’re coming for you.”
WATCH | Puppy reunites with siblings after community recovery effort:
Puppy reunites with siblings after community recovery effort
After Brownie went missing Tuesday from the back yard of her foster home, community advocates investigated sightings throughout the week around downtown Winnipeg. On Friday, after a sighting at a building on Maryland Street., they converged around the building while police went inside to retrieve the nine-week-old puppy.