Sierra, our family
dog, was taken from our Odgen neighborhood (Wilmington, NC) on
April 17, 1998. She was last seen wearing her blue collar and
identification. We hope she was mistaken as homeless, and very
much wish to have her back with us. To view the full PDF of the
information to the right, please click on the image. [you will
need Adobe Acrobat Reader
installed on your machine to view this file.]
Caution: if your world is full of happy thoughts, you may want stop reading now and simply view the PDF.
However, if you are missing a pet, we invite you to explore some of the lost & stolen pet pages compassionately run by a variety of individuals and groups. (A few links are given below.) Sadly, there is a growing market for stolen companion animals in the U.S. Our local veterinarians euphemistically refer to pet theft as being "taken", whether to furnish a lucrative laboratory test animal market, simply stealing a healthy pet for one's own family, or the surprisingly widespread sadistic practice of fight gambling in both rural and urban communities (e.g., where dogs are matched in battles to the death for the pleasure and entertainment of humans).
With that said, you may consider this author an animal rights extremist. Not so, for I well understand and support the need for some animal experimentation for the future benefit of homo sapiens and other animal species. However, until the disappeance of our pet, I hadn't any clue how widespread these other, illegal activities are. Through the support and education of my local Wilmington NC animal control officers and extensive conversations with area vets, pet disappearance in southeast NC appears fairly common. Without an explosion of animal carcasses littering the roadways, the disappearances of animals cannot wholly be attributed to sudden pet roaming urges or alligators, as a city police officer suggested.
After no other local law enforcement agency would admit animal theft or cruelty problems exist in their jurisdictions, I gained a sense that our animal control officers were the only ones who took animal cruelty seriously. It is a felony to steal a pet in North Carolina. The Wilmington, Pender and Brunswick county animal control officers proved far more compassionate than the public's erroneous misperception of "dog catchers", often far more sensitive to the animals in their care than the owners fortunate enough to be reunited with their pets. These departments are also typically the least well-funded law enforcement agencies. I am very grateful for their service and support.
Our Sierra remains missing. We are not interested in legal action -- we simply want our dog back safe and sound. Feel free to contact us at the address below if you believe you have useful information regarding her or her recovery. However, use this address only if you have a strong match with our description. Please: if you simply wish to send us heartfelt condolences, thank you! We appreciate your feelings -- but rather than send us email (we get tons already), we think a better way to show your concern would be to volunteer at a local pound or animal shelter for a few hours. If your time is too limited, consider donating a bag of food instead.