Dog saved from execution
2011-07-21
Lise Beyers
A LOCAL family’s dog had a stay of execution after he had gone ‘walk-about’. While the van Heerden family of Protea Street, Paarl, were holidaying in the northern part of the country, one of their beloved dogs, Robbie, went missing. But in the meantime Robbie, a 13-year-old Jack Russell-cross, had found his way to Textile Street, crossing not only the busy Paarl Main Street, but also the Berg River Boulevard. Here he wandered into the office of Sanet du Toit, who is coincidentally a board member of the Wellington SPCA. Du Toit could see that the dog was lost and took him to Wellington. She also put up posters along Textile Street advertising the dog. After seven days, no one came to claim the dog and he then became the property of the SPCA. After another seven days of being unclaimed and not adopted, a dog faces the death sentence. Colleen McQueen of the Wellington SPCA said that things were not looking too good for the stray dog’s future. “He is old and partially deaf and blind. The chances of him being adopted were very bleak. “Two weeks went by and when we did not hear from his owners, we had to start thinking of having him put down.” The old dog was however given a stay of execution when the board of the SPCA decided to have him advertised one last time. Meanwile the van Heerden’s were informed about their dog’s disappearance and frantically telephoned neighbours to ask them to keep a look-out for Robbie. They contacted the Paarl SPCA who said that they did not have a dog of Robbie’s description. Eventually they contacted the Wellington SPCA, only to be given the good news and thereby basically also saving Robbie’s life. “We don’t know how Robbie could have wandered so far away from home. He is not a dog that ever wanders around,” said Fritz van Heerden. Robbie has come a long way with the van Heerden family. They adopted him at the age of three in England and he travelled all the way to South Africa with them. “He is a very close part of our family and we would have been devastated if something had happened to him.” And so the family was reunited with their dog as soon as they returned from their winter holiday, and evidently, Robbie was ecstatic to see his human family.
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