Theft of Pets.
The theft of dogs and cats has been in the news recently, and some memes are circulating that say that pet theft is on the rise. Most of the conversations about pet theft contain more misinformation than fact. In order to keep your pets safe from theft, you need to have a clear understanding of how theft might happen. Also, if your pet is missing right now, you shouldn’t let the suspicion of theft keep you from pursuing other possibilities.
I think it is very rare that anyone starts out their day with the goal of stealing a cat or a dog. There are car thieves and burglars, embezzlers and blackmailers, and I’ll bet there are probably a few professional assassins in real life, not just in movies. I really doubt there is anyone who sets out to steal pets as their main profession. I have never heard a credible story of such a person in Washington state. Pet theft does happen, in a different way. The common way pets are stolen is that someone finds a pet and intends to keep that cat or dog without trying to find an owner. This is theft, for sure, legally and morally, but it’s not like that person set out in the morning planning to find a dog and keep it or resell it for a profit. Another form of theft that happens much less often is that someone steals a car that happens to have a dog in it, or they burglarize a house and take the pet too. Most of the times that people have claimed that their missing pet was stolen, it later turned out that that was a mistaken assumption. If your pet is missing and you think he was stolen, don’t focus all of your thoughts and energies on that possibility. You could be missing opportunities to find your pet if there is some other explanation for the disappearance, which is usually the case. As far as securing your pets against theft, your main focus would be to prevent them from becoming lost, which exposes them to theft. Also, do not leave your pet in your car any more than you have to, and take measures to prevent your home from being burglarized. Someone would have to be insane or high to try to burglarize our house with five crazy dogs inside. Also, the dogs destroyed anything of value long ago, so there’s nothing worth taking. Still, we take basic precautions to secure the house, including locked doors and surveillance cameras, and keeping the dogs inside at all times.
Do people find cats and just keep them? Well, yes, but not like they were just walking down the street, they saw a cat, and they decided to keep it. The way most people keep a cat that isn’t theirs is that the cat starts meowing at their back door, or hanging out in the yard. They feed the cat, and they ask all the neighbors if they know who owns the cat. They put a small amount of effort into finding the cats owner, but they don't look too hard. Eventually, the cat just sort of moves into the house, and becomes their cat. I have acquired cats in this way in the past (although I wouldn’t do that now), and I probably know of hundreds of people who acquired a cat in this way. Many of the people who ask for our help to find a lost cat actually got their cat in this manner, when the cat just showed up one day and moved in. Is this theft? In a manner of speaking, but it’s not like there was criminal intent. No one is going to be arrested because a cat showed up one day and moved into the house. If someone was just walking down the street and saw a cat and picked it up, it would usually be because the cat appeared to be lost or in distress for some reason, and they wanted to help. It would be very rare for any person to just be cruising the streets looking for a cat to steal. All cats should be kept indoors all the time to protect them from all of the other dangers they face, which would also protect them from theft. Do people break into houses specifically for the purpose of stealing cats? It may happen, on rare occasions, but in the thousands of instances where people asked for our help to find a missing cat, I have found no evidence of any cat being targeted for theft specifically.
The way people find and keep dogs is a little more sinister, in my view. If you see a dog running around loose, you should assume that either he lives nearby, or he’s actually lost. In my neighborhood, I think I have found about 20 dogs within a mile of my home that were very close to their homes. I asked around and discovered their homes quickly, and got them reunited in less than 20 minutes. If a dog is running for blocks or miles, this isn’t just harmless wandering. This is a lost dog. I would definitely pick up such a dog, if I could, in order to keep him safe and get him back to his family if possible. There are a significant number of people who would find a dog on the street and spontaneously decide to keep him. The three main reasons people keep dogs are that they just fall in love with the dog, they jump to the conclusion the owner is negligent or abusive, or they jump to the conclusion the dog was dumped. If you lost your dog and never found him, it would be more likely that someone kept him than that he died for any reason. Dogs do die because of predators and car accidents, but those are the least common scenarios. If your dog is missing, it is relatively unlikely that someone intentionally kept your dog, but it does happen, probably less than 20% of all missing dog cases. Keeping someone’s dog, without ever trying to find the owner, is theft. It is almost never prosecuted. If you decided to steal a dog in this manner, you could be fairly certain you would face zero legal consequences, which is why people do it. You would be evil, and you should go to hell, but you probably would not go to jail. If your dog is missing, you have a 75% chance of getting your dog back if you pursue every avenue of recovery. Of the less than 25% of dogs that are never found, my experience leads me to believe that 75% of those were kept by people who just happened to find them, maybe 12% were taken by predators (if they are small dogs), about 10% could die from car accidents, and less than 2% were taken by thieves who targeted that specific dog for theft. It can happen, but intentional, premeditated theft is probably the least likely scenario. If you google “dogs stolen per year,” one of the top results might be an article from AKC that says 2 million dogs are stolen every year. Seeing that number, you might be shocked, and imagine something like the theft of Lady Gaga’s dog, ripped from the arms of her dog walker. The AKC article gives no details or source. If the 2 million number is accurate, I would estimate that 1.9 million dog thefts were of the finders keepers variety, and less than 100,000 were intentional, premeditated, targeted thefts. The second hit I got on that search was a study in the UK, with sources and hard numbers, saying outright dog theft is relatively rare, less than 2,000 dogs stolen out of 10 million dogs in the UK. If both the AKC article and the UK study are right, then it probably depends on how you define theft.
My impression, although I don’t have hard statistics to back it up, is that seventy years ago it was much more common to just find a dog and keep him. My vague recollection is that many black and white TV reruns revolved around a wandering dog that followed a boy home and he asked his mom if he could keep the dog. The mother of that B&W sitcom never said, “Hell no. That’s someone’s dog, and keeping it would be theft, you rotten little creature.” As far as I can recall, anyway. 70 years ago, most of us lived in smaller towns. If a dog was known to belong to someone, you would just let him roam. When I was a child, I was basically raised by the neighbor’s dog. I was her puppy, essentially. She roamed anywhere and everywhere around the neighborhood, and she was my guardian. You definitely shouldn’t just let a dog wander for blocks in today’s world. Some people seem to think it is still 1951, and you can just let a dog wander, and you can just claim a dog if you decide to. It is not 1951, and you can’t do that.
So, when theft of dogs does occur, which is still a less-likely scenario, it is more of the variety that someone saw a dog wandering loose and took it home. They fell in love with the dog, or they saw an opportunity to sell the dog, or they decided to breed the dog and sell the puppies. All of that is expressly illegal, but it’s not like there are roaming gangs of dog thieves who are making millions in the sale of black market puppies. If anyone knows of such a ring of dog thieves, I would very much like to know more about it. Please send any credible, verifiable tips to Jim@3retrievers.com. If dogs are mostly stolen out of opportunity, the key to prevention is to make sure your dog doesn’t go missing, or if he does go missing, have a plan to act quickly to recover him as soon as possible.
Only in the past year or two have a few cases come to my attention where it appears that thieves saw a dog or cat they wanted and deliberately planned to steal that pet. Surveillance video showed one man casing an area for hours, and seizing a moment of inattention to steal a dog from a vehicle. I also know of one instance where a man was knocked down and his dog was intentionally taken from him, on camera. This type of theft is still very rare at this point. Yes, you should take precautions to prevent people from stealing your dog or cat from your home or car. Always lock your doors, and installing surveillance cameras is not a bad idea. Don’t leave your dog tied up in front of a business while you go in for a few minutes, since this is basically an invitation of theft. However, all of the other ways pets go missing are still way more common than intentional, targeted theft. You should concentrate on all of these other ways of preventing your dog or cat from going missing first, then take extra measures to insure against the very small likelihood of theft. If you think your dog was stolen, but you don’t have concrete evidence of theft, don’t put all of your efforts into pursuing the thieves when it may be the case that your dog went missing for some other reason. Be sure to use all the tools available for finding your dog, no matter what the reason is for his disappearance.
If you do have solid evidence that your dog was stolen, such as surveillance video of the theft, or if your car was stolen with the dog inside, be sure to file a police report. In those rare instances where a dog was targeted for theft, the way those dogs have been reunited with their families was through large, bright, weatherproof signs, or through social media, or because the story was picked up by a local news outlet. If your dog was stolen and you have strong reasons to think you know who did it, please contact an attorney right away, or possibly a licensed private investigator. In the cases I know of where a known party intentionally took and kept a dog, it usually required the police or an attorney, or both, to get the dog back.
The theft of dogs and cats has been in the news recently, and some memes are circulating that say that pet theft is on the rise. Most of the conversations about pet theft contain more misinformation than fact. In order to keep your pets safe from theft, you need to have a clear understanding of how theft might happen. Also, if your pet is missing right now, you shouldn’t let the suspicion of theft keep you from pursuing other possibilities.
I think it is very rare that anyone starts out their day with the goal of stealing a cat or a dog. There are car thieves and burglars, embezzlers and blackmailers, and I’ll bet there are probably a few professional assassins in real life, not just in movies. I really doubt there is anyone who sets out to steal pets as their main profession. I have never heard a credible story of such a person in Washington state. Pet theft does happen, in a different way. The common way pets are stolen is that someone finds a pet and intends to keep that cat or dog without trying to find an owner. This is theft, for sure, legally and morally, but it’s not like that person set out in the morning planning to find a dog and keep it or resell it for a profit. Another form of theft that happens much less often is that someone steals a car that happens to have a dog in it, or they burglarize a house and take the pet too. Most of the times that people have claimed that their missing pet was stolen, it later turned out that that was a mistaken assumption. If your pet is missing and you think he was stolen, don’t focus all of your thoughts and energies on that possibility. You could be missing opportunities to find your pet if there is some other explanation for the disappearance, which is usually the case. As far as securing your pets against theft, your main focus would be to prevent them from becoming lost, which exposes them to theft. Also, do not leave your pet in your car any more than you have to, and take measures to prevent your home from being burglarized. Someone would have to be insane or high to try to burglarize our house with five crazy dogs inside. Also, the dogs destroyed anything of value long ago, so there’s nothing worth taking. Still, we take basic precautions to secure the house, including locked doors and surveillance cameras, and keeping the dogs inside at all times.
Do people find cats and just keep them? Well, yes, but not like they were just walking down the street, they saw a cat, and they decided to keep it. The way most people keep a cat that isn’t theirs is that the cat starts meowing at their back door, or hanging out in the yard. They feed the cat, and they ask all the neighbors if they know who owns the cat. They put a small amount of effort into finding the cats owner, but they don't look too hard. Eventually, the cat just sort of moves into the house, and becomes their cat. I have acquired cats in this way in the past (although I wouldn’t do that now), and I probably know of hundreds of people who acquired a cat in this way. Many of the people who ask for our help to find a lost cat actually got their cat in this manner, when the cat just showed up one day and moved in. Is this theft? In a manner of speaking, but it’s not like there was criminal intent. No one is going to be arrested because a cat showed up one day and moved into the house. If someone was just walking down the street and saw a cat and picked it up, it would usually be because the cat appeared to be lost or in distress for some reason, and they wanted to help. It would be very rare for any person to just be cruising the streets looking for a cat to steal. All cats should be kept indoors all the time to protect them from all of the other dangers they face, which would also protect them from theft. Do people break into houses specifically for the purpose of stealing cats? It may happen, on rare occasions, but in the thousands of instances where people asked for our help to find a missing cat, I have found no evidence of any cat being targeted for theft specifically.
The way people find and keep dogs is a little more sinister, in my view. If you see a dog running around loose, you should assume that either he lives nearby, or he’s actually lost. In my neighborhood, I think I have found about 20 dogs within a mile of my home that were very close to their homes. I asked around and discovered their homes quickly, and got them reunited in less than 20 minutes. If a dog is running for blocks or miles, this isn’t just harmless wandering. This is a lost dog. I would definitely pick up such a dog, if I could, in order to keep him safe and get him back to his family if possible. There are a significant number of people who would find a dog on the street and spontaneously decide to keep him. The three main reasons people keep dogs are that they just fall in love with the dog, they jump to the conclusion the owner is negligent or abusive, or they jump to the conclusion the dog was dumped. If you lost your dog and never found him, it would be more likely that someone kept him than that he died for any reason. Dogs do die because of predators and car accidents, but those are the least common scenarios. If your dog is missing, it is relatively unlikely that someone intentionally kept your dog, but it does happen, probably less than 20% of all missing dog cases. Keeping someone’s dog, without ever trying to find the owner, is theft. It is almost never prosecuted. If you decided to steal a dog in this manner, you could be fairly certain you would face zero legal consequences, which is why people do it. You would be evil, and you should go to hell, but you probably would not go to jail. If your dog is missing, you have a 75% chance of getting your dog back if you pursue every avenue of recovery. Of the less than 25% of dogs that are never found, my experience leads me to believe that 75% of those were kept by people who just happened to find them, maybe 12% were taken by predators (if they are small dogs), about 10% could die from car accidents, and less than 2% were taken by thieves who targeted that specific dog for theft. It can happen, but intentional, premeditated theft is probably the least likely scenario. If you google “dogs stolen per year,” one of the top results might be an article from AKC that says 2 million dogs are stolen every year. Seeing that number, you might be shocked, and imagine something like the theft of Lady Gaga’s dog, ripped from the arms of her dog walker. The AKC article gives no details or source. If the 2 million number is accurate, I would estimate that 1.9 million dog thefts were of the finders keepers variety, and less than 100,000 were intentional, premeditated, targeted thefts. The second hit I got on that search was a study in the UK, with sources and hard numbers, saying outright dog theft is relatively rare, less than 2,000 dogs stolen out of 10 million dogs in the UK. If both the AKC article and the UK study are right, then it probably depends on how you define theft.
My impression, although I don’t have hard statistics to back it up, is that seventy years ago it was much more common to just find a dog and keep him. My vague recollection is that many black and white TV reruns revolved around a wandering dog that followed a boy home and he asked his mom if he could keep the dog. The mother of that B&W sitcom never said, “Hell no. That’s someone’s dog, and keeping it would be theft, you rotten little creature.” As far as I can recall, anyway. 70 years ago, most of us lived in smaller towns. If a dog was known to belong to someone, you would just let him roam. When I was a child, I was basically raised by the neighbor’s dog. I was her puppy, essentially. She roamed anywhere and everywhere around the neighborhood, and she was my guardian. You definitely shouldn’t just let a dog wander for blocks in today’s world. Some people seem to think it is still 1951, and you can just let a dog wander, and you can just claim a dog if you decide to. It is not 1951, and you can’t do that.
So, when theft of dogs does occur, which is still a less-likely scenario, it is more of the variety that someone saw a dog wandering loose and took it home. They fell in love with the dog, or they saw an opportunity to sell the dog, or they decided to breed the dog and sell the puppies. All of that is expressly illegal, but it’s not like there are roaming gangs of dog thieves who are making millions in the sale of black market puppies. If anyone knows of such a ring of dog thieves, I would very much like to know more about it. Please send any credible, verifiable tips to Jim@3retrievers.com. If dogs are mostly stolen out of opportunity, the key to prevention is to make sure your dog doesn’t go missing, or if he does go missing, have a plan to act quickly to recover him as soon as possible.
Only in the past year or two have a few cases come to my attention where it appears that thieves saw a dog or cat they wanted and deliberately planned to steal that pet. Surveillance video showed one man casing an area for hours, and seizing a moment of inattention to steal a dog from a vehicle. I also know of one instance where a man was knocked down and his dog was intentionally taken from him, on camera. This type of theft is still very rare at this point. Yes, you should take precautions to prevent people from stealing your dog or cat from your home or car. Always lock your doors, and installing surveillance cameras is not a bad idea. Don’t leave your dog tied up in front of a business while you go in for a few minutes, since this is basically an invitation of theft. However, all of the other ways pets go missing are still way more common than intentional, targeted theft. You should concentrate on all of these other ways of preventing your dog or cat from going missing first, then take extra measures to insure against the very small likelihood of theft. If you think your dog was stolen, but you don’t have concrete evidence of theft, don’t put all of your efforts into pursuing the thieves when it may be the case that your dog went missing for some other reason. Be sure to use all the tools available for finding your dog, no matter what the reason is for his disappearance.
If you do have solid evidence that your dog was stolen, such as surveillance video of the theft, or if your car was stolen with the dog inside, be sure to file a police report. In those rare instances where a dog was targeted for theft, the way those dogs have been reunited with their families was through large, bright, weatherproof signs, or through social media, or because the story was picked up by a local news outlet. If your dog was stolen and you have strong reasons to think you know who did it, please contact an attorney right away, or possibly a licensed private investigator. In the cases I know of where a known party intentionally took and kept a dog, it usually required the police or an attorney, or both, to get the dog back.