Here's a different and terrible slant to what can happen if your dog gets away..... This happened in my own town.

Posted Sunday, December 29, 2002 - 3:01 am

Jeanne Brooks
Losing Truman: three days and one possible subpoena later

On a Friday night, not too long ago, JF Lucas called to his dog.

Lucas -- JF is his full given name -- was standing outside Simpsonville's animal control kennel. It was after hours, Dec. 12. The gates were closed.

But a dog knows its owner's voice, just as an owner knows his dog's bark. Soon as he called, Lucas says, Truman started barking excitedly.

There, in the cold and dark, Lucas felt reassured. His dog was found.

But that was already Day Two.

So if you ask the Greenville Humane Society, Truman's fate was set in Simpsonville.

By city ordinance, animals picked up in Simpsonville are kept at the city's kennel for just three days.

On Saturday, Dec. 13, about 10 a.m., Lucas and his daughter McKenzie, 3, went to the kennel to get Truman back. The gates were open, but no one was around.

They saw their 7-year-old part yellow lab/part golden retriever behind a fence and walked over to him.

McKenzie asked her four-legged friend, "Truman, you coming home?"

Lucas says, "If I'd known then what I know now, I would have jumped that fence and got my dog out."

Instead, he drove to the police department to find the animal control officer. But Simpsonville's animal control officer works Monday through Friday.

Another officer took Lucas' name and telephone number and said she'd leave a message. Lucas and McKenzie left expecting to retrieve Truman on Monday.

But Saturday was Day Three.

Simpsonville Chief of Police Charles Reece says his officer took Truman to The Greenville Humane Society around 9 a.m. Monday.

On Monday afternoon, Lucas left work early to go get his dog.

At the kennel, the animal control officer explained the three-day policy. She never received any message, she said. She told Lucas that Truman already had been put down.

A very upset Lucas then drove to the Humane Society. "I just couldn't believe they would euthanize such a friendly, beautiful dog in less than four hours," he says.

He asked to see his dead dog.

Lucas says the staff told him to come back the next day, which he did, arriving 10 minutes before the shelter opened -- but two hours after a sanitation department truck. Truman was gone.

Judy Outlaw, the society's director, says she doesn't know the exact sequence of events, but finding Truman at that point would have been difficult in any case.

"Typically, (the owner) would have to have a picture," she says.

When he couldn't see his dog, Lucas wanted to see a written record of what time Truman was delivered to the Humane Society shelter, what time the dog was euthanized and why.

For that, he was told, he'd have to get a subpoena.

Outlaw says it's simply Humane Society policy not to release information without a subpoena.

Lucas called a lawyer.

So here's where things stand. Reece says what happened was a shame and that Simpsonville has changed the days it delivers animals to the Humane Society.

Outlaw says every municipality ought to keep animals for the same number of days, preferably five. And owners ought to tag their pets.

As for Lucas, he says after two weeks any record can be altered.

And, "If my dog was adopted, that's wonderful, he's not dead. Somebody got a great dog."
Jeanne Brooks' column appears on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (864) 298-4261.