A POUND PUPPY’S TALE

ANIMALS

When Guinness, a small Australian shepherd, wandered out of MIKE WALLACE’S Lakewood back yard, Wallace panicked.

A few blocks away. Guinness had wound up in the arms of BETH JOHNSON, who started posting signs around the neighborhood, and, after visiting area animal shelters, took the dog to the Garland Humane Society on Saturday afternoon.

“I was told that I had three days to find the dog’s owner or to return to pick her up,” says Johnson. “I made it absolutely clear to them that no matter what, someone would be there at the end of the 72-hour holding period to retrieve Guinness.” Johnson agreed to pay the $50 readoption fee at the end of the waiting period if the owner had not come forward, and gave the society a $30 donation.

The shelter was open from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday. The next day, Wallace saw one of Johnson’s signs. “I immediately drove to the shelter only to find out that Monday was their day to be closed,” says Wallace. A staff member let him in, and Wallace learned that Guinness had been destroyed that morning.

“I was told that because Guinness had jumped an inner holding pen fence twice, she was deemed unadoptable and therefore exterminated,” says Wallace. “What I absolutely cannot figure out is why Johnson wasn’t contacted before they killed my dog.”

But what bothers him the most is that his dog was destroyed after spending less than 48 hours at the shelter, on a day the shelter was closed, leaving him with only four-and-a-half hours (total time the shelter was open from the time Guinness had been taken there) to claim her.

The Garland Humane Society says it has no such animal-holding policy as Johnson describes. Rather, it’s their procedure to destroy animals as soon as they are deemed unadoptable. “If the animal was so adoptable, why didn’t Beth Johnson keep it herself?” asks BOBBIE ADRIAN, a member of the society’s board of directors.