It's Bound to Happen: Dog Abandoned!

Cesar is Left Behind After Ten Years!

About six years ago when I first began assessing the implications of opening a doggy daycare and boarding facility, I ventured up to Camano Island to a dog boarding facility.  The owner, who had been fairly successful, left me with three key suggestions.  Well, I've forgotten the first two (I am getting up there in years)--but not the third.  He said that it wasn't a matter of if but rather of when.  Someone was eventually going to abandon their dog at Sasha's. 

Well, it finally happened.  This past May a young woman hurriedly brought Cesar to Sasha's, explaining she was headed to the airport and needed to leave ASAP.  She indicated that Cesar, who is a ten-year-old shih tzu, had passed our temp assessment test and stayed with us before.  Untrue.  She was in such a frenetic hurry, I didn't have a chance to vet her on our computer.  Told her our process was that she could pay upon return.  But she insisted that she pay now and gave me $500 in cash and said she would pick up the following Wednesday.  Another untrue.  Two days before pick-up I received a phone call from a man with a foreign accent, asking if we had a dog named Cesar staying with us.  If so, he indicated he was the owner.  He said that while he loved the dog, he was in no position to pick him up on Wednesday...or any other day of the week.  Indicated he had been forced to relocate temporarily and he was now living on the East Coast where he was getting treatment for an unspecified affliction.

He said he didn't know where his wife was...or for that matter his toddler daughter as well.  Forensics Dan was starting to smell the decay of a domestic dispute which was not of my making.  I never heard from the woman again.  No emails or phone calls.  But myriad emails from Cesar's male owner said he would come pick up Cesar.  But first he would require extensive medical care and he had run out of money and would need to find a loan.  At this point I determined that Cesar was not going to be saved by his owners.  And at ten years old, an animal rescue might not save his sweet life--the welfare of the pet owners was not my concern.  Only finding Cesar a forever loving home.   I love the aroma of serendipity! Just so happened that another boarder's owners, whose similarly sweet tiny white dog, had stayed with us while Cesar was here.  They raised their collective hands and insisted that they were the right forever home for Cesar and kept visiting him while we worked on having him legally declared abandoned.  Hope to see Cesar back at Sasha's on occasion.  He really grows on you!