Dog lost in Texas no longer welcome at home
Owner says ‘we don’t want him back’
The only trace of Bruno at his former Spokane Valley home is the “beware of dog” signs on the chain-link fence.
And former owner Ruth Stallings is just fine with that.
Bruno ran away when Stallings was camping at Lake Whitney, Texas, and was picked up by park rangers, who sent the shepherd-mix to an animal shelter.
A microchip under the dog’s skin led the shelter to Stallings.
“They tracked the owner down to Spokane,” said Dr. Bill Trotter, a physician who volunteers with the shelter, Bosque Animal Rescue Kennels, in Clifton, Texas. “And they called her and she said she didn’t want to have anything to do with the dog. ‘Send him to the pound’ is what she said.”
The newspaper in Meridian, Texas, wrote a story about Bruno and Stallings’ refusal to take him back, which Trotter said sparked a community outcry.
“It irritated the hell out of me – I wanted to make sure the people in Spokane knew about this,” Trotter said. “Here we run this little kennel and it’s full all the time. Then this woman doesn’t want her dog back.”
The shelter’s voicemail said there is room for 15 dogs at BARK, but currently 50 are living there.
“People abandon dogs here a lot,” said Evan Moore, editor and publisher of the weekly Bosque County News. “We are a rural area, and we are close to Dallas-Fort Worth. People drive down here and dump their dogs off.”
Stallings confirmed this week that she doesn’t want Bruno back. “He ran away from us five times and we figured he didn’t want to be with us. First chance he got he’d take off.”
She added, “we did search for him for a day and a half, but we had to leave.”
An offer from BARK volunteers to drive Bruno halfway to Spokane for a meet-up with Stallings doesn’t interest the dog’s former owner.
“When we adopted him we overlooked some things,” said Stallings, who’s had other dogs. “He was chewing up clothing and stuff, and we thought it was the puppy stage. But it never got any better.”
Bruno is 3 years old.
The Bosque County News said in its story that he is “intelligent, leash trained and apparently housebroken. Bruno seems like an all-around good dog with an even temperament and eagerness to make friends with other dogs.”
Stallings said she hopes someone in Texas will “really bond” with Bruno and take him in.
But, “we don’t want him back. It just got old,” she said. “We should have taken him back to the pound right away.”
Bruno is currently at a foster home waiting for an adoptive family.