Five-month-old Vango, an Australian shepherd, might have played a role in his own rescue when he alerted the staff at a Gatineau, Quebec, pet store to his suspected dognapping.
According to Yves Jodoin, a team member and dog trainer at Au Royaume des Animaux, Vango accompanied a couple who usually came to buy cat food on a visit to the store.
“The dog was barking, the dog was prodding, and he was eager for my attention,” Jodoin recalled.
Jodoin became instantly concerned when the couple seemed uninformed about basic details regarding the dog, such as his exact age, whether he had been neutered, what type of food he ate, and how much they had spent on him.
“They were evading the questions,” Jodoin added. “I offered the dog some treats, but he kept barking.”
Reported missing Meanwhile, a coworker started checking social media for reports of stolen dogs and quickly found a photo of Vango. The dog had been reported missing from his home in Buckingham, Quebec, only two and a half hours earlier.
At that moment, Jodoin realized he already knew the dog – he had trained Vango as a puppy.
“Then I shouted, ‘Vango, come!’ And the dog responded, jumping,” Jodoin recalled. “All along, he had been barking and prodding, trying to convey, ‘Hey, I’m not the dog they claim I am.'”
The couple claimed they had found the dog in the woods. The woman informed Jodoin that she wanted to keep the dog as a support animal because of her poor health and inability to afford the acquisition and training of a dog.
With witnesses surrounding them at the store, Jodoin urged the couple to surrender the animal. He then called Vango’s legal owner, Josée Francoeur.
‘I can’t talk about it without sobbing’ “I can’t discuss it without crying,” Francoeur said about the moment she received Jodoin’s call.
Francoeur explained that the dog had disappeared after she had let him out for a bathroom break in her fenced yard at around 9 a.m. on Monday. When she peeked outside, Vango, who wasn’t microchipped, had vanished.
“Could someone have taken him? And I wondered, ‘Who could do that? It’s impossible!'”
Francoeur quickly posted a notice on the local SPCA site for lost animals and on various social media platforms. Tearfully, she scoured her neighborhood, asking everyone she encountered if they had seen her dog. At one point, a police officer stepped in to assist and filed an official missing dog report.
She was beginning to lose hope when her phone rang.
“Imagine, if those people hadn’t gone to that pet store, I would have lost my dog forever,” Francoeur added.
Filed a police complaint She has now filed a police report because she wants the couple to understand the repercussions of their actions.
“I don’t want to cause them trouble. We don’t know why they did it. But at the same time, they took my baby,” Francoeur said. “I want to deter others from doing this.”
Gatineau police stated that they are investigating but would need to establish whether the couple intentionally stole the dog or simply found him before pressing charges.
The SPCA de L’Outaouais, where the couple had taken Vango that morning to register the dog under a new name, is using this incident to remind dog owners to have their pets microchipped.
Francoeur said she has scheduled an appointment to have Vango microchipped.
“All of this could have been avoided,” she claimed.