his pups had gone missing<\/a> last Sunday while he was out of town and they were in the care of a dog walker he has known for years and recently hired. That detective work paid off Thursday morning, when Baez said he got a tip from a stranger who told him he\u2019d seen the dogs being walked by a man in Yonkers, just north of the Bronx.<\/p>\nThe tipster said he struck up a conversation with the man and they exchanged phone numbers, but the man stopped replying to the tipster\u2019s texts after he asked for a photo of one of the dogs, according to Baez.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018\u200aToday when I woke up, I look on the news and I see the dogs actually were stolen, so I had to call you and let you know,\u2019\u201d Baez recounted the tipster as saying. He declined to share the tipster’s name, saying the man did not want to speak with a reporter.<\/p>\n
The dog owner said the tipster gave him a Yonkers address where he believed the dogs were located. Baez said he immediately drove there and parked his car, watching the street for any sign of his bulldogs \u2014 Churro, Mocha, Rosie and Banksy. One hour turned to two, and then eventually seven, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy thing is, every dog has to be walked at least anywhere from six to eight hours, right? So I’m like, \u2018I’m gonna give it like eight hours.\u2019 And as soon as I gave it eight hours, I look up and I see this guy with Mocha and Rosie,\u201d Baez said. \u201cI’m like, \u2018No effing way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Baez said he didn\u2019t recognize the man, but recorded him walking the pair of dogs in a park and then on the block where he parked his car. In videos Baez shared with Gothamist, the unidentified man is wearing a checkered red-and-black jacket and navy-blue sweatpants with white stripes. In one of the recordings, he walks right past Baez\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
Baez said he kept his distance and waited to see if he would see his other two dogs. Soon after, he said, the man went back inside a building on the block and came out with them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when Baez said he called 911. He said officers from both the Yonkers Police Department and NYPD responded to the scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey pulled up and asked me questions, and then they just went upstairs and within seconds my dogs were coming down the stairs,\u201d he said. \u201cAs soon as they saw me, they just ran towards me and like Banksy almost knocked me off my feet and I’m on the ground hugging her.\u200a It was just a beautiful moment, even the cops there was like, you know, watery eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baez said he doesn\u2019t know how his dogs ended up in Yonkers, but is leaving it to law enforcement to find out. The NYPD confirmed the dogs were found and its investigation is ongoing. The department had earlier released photos of the four dogs, saying they were valued at more than $32,000.<\/p>\n
Baez said the dog walker he had hired called him on Sunday, saying the dogs were missing from his apartment, so he drove back from Vermont, where he was on a snowboarding trip. He said the walker was outside the building when he arrived, and repeatedly told him he had dropped the dogs off the day before. But Baez said he reviewed Ring camera footage and saw video of the walker leaving the apartment with the dogs Saturday afternoon, but no video of him returning with them.<\/p>\n
Baez said he hasn\u2019t heard from the dog walker in days, and resorted to looking for his dogs himself. He provided Gothamist with the walker\u2019s name, but the man has not returned multiple messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear how or if the walker is connected to the man Baez saw in possession of his dogs in Yonkers. The Yonkers Police Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry.<\/p>\n
By Thursday night, the four pups were tucked in their beds after dinner, snoring away, Baez said. He said he\u2019s planning to microchip all of them and get tracking devices that will ping him if they\u2019re ever walked too far, though he doesn\u2019t plan on going away again any time soon. Since the ordeal, he said, friends have offered to take care of his dogs in the future.<\/p>\n
Baez said he and the pups had a full itinerary on Friday, including a dog park visit, a trip to a spa, and a neighborhood party in Inwood, where they spent the first years of their lives, to celebrate their return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four Bronx bulldogs that were missing for several days are back home with their rightful owner, who said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-177545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}