Dog gone it - and it cost £70 to get them back!

Date published: 05/04/2008

Wardle resident Linda Phillips was relieved to find her missing Rotweiller dogs had been taken to Manchester Dogs Home, but her relief quickly turned to anger when she was told the dogs had been picked up in Rochdale by the dog warden and taken to Manchester becuase the warden reported they were not micro-chipped, and hence the owner could not be identified, except the dogs are micro-chipped and Manchester Dogs Home scanned the chips and left a message on Mrs Phillips' answer phone as soon as the dogs arrived!

The dogs had escaped from Mrs Phillips back garden becuase vandals had damaged the six foot fence surroudning the garden, and having realised the dogs had escaped through the vandalised fence, Mrs Phillips' daughter contacted her at work and organised a search party.

Mrs Phillips also rang the dog warden service and explained what had happened and gave them her phone numbers to ring me if they had been picked up.

She says: "Eventually I got a call from the dog warden service saying my dogs had been picked up two minutes away from my house and taken to Manchester Dogs Home. I explained that both were microchipped but was told nothing had shown up when they were scanned by the warden or they would have been returned home.

"I hightailed it to the Dogs Home and they told me they had left a message on my answer phone; when I asked how they had got my number they said 'from the microchip'.

"The dog warden had written on the form to the effect that no chip had been found.

"Even though I was relieved to know my dogs were safe, I was a bit miffed when I had to pay £70 to get them back as the dogs home reception said the dog warden could have used the information from the chip to return them to me free of charge!"

Mrs Phillips has now had the fence repaired and intends to contact Rochdale Council to see if she can get her £70 refunded.

She added: "The dog warden left four mongrels roaming round the same street; quite a few dogs on our estate are let out in the morning and left to their own devices all day, mine get out once and get picked up within minutes! But there again, mine are pedigrees and I suppose it is obvious the owners are going to pay to get them back whereas they may not be so sure about mongrels."