At this point I consider the dog stolen property Mark. If it wasn't a living being, I would be more inclined to let the courts settle this pre-resolution. When a living being is involved, I say return the dog and let the two week owner seek remedy in court.
What makes this an easy call for me, is that both parties seem to agree that the dog was the 14 year companion of the person who had posession prior to this.
This is traumatic for the dog, and completely unnecessary IMO.
If a person stole your car, the police would not wait for a judgement in court before returning it to you. It would be registered in your name, but both parties seem to have stipulated that the dog was the prior owner's property.
Well, at this point, it appears that neither the police nor the courts believe this is a case of stolen property.
You mentioned that if I owned a car that was stolen, that it would be returned to me when recovered. If so, it's because it WAS determined to be stolen at one time.
While this situation is heartbreaking, I've read a few different accounts of how the dog was tranfered from the posession of one person to another. In some of those accounts, this could NEVER be taken as "theft."
While the woman and her actions are reprehensible, just because she's being mean and awful doesn't mean what she's doing is illegal.
Mark
Absolutely! When I divorced, my ex-husband took two of our dogs and I took one a the cat; when one of the dogs he had ran away, it left the "mother" dog alone all day; he was going to give her to a nice couple out in the country; she was 15 years old.
My vet said she needed to be with people she knew and loved at that age, that the change might kill her; so I took her. I couldn't have lived with myself if she had been lonely in her old age! (And she lived five more years!)