An emotional Cherene de Wet was close to tears as she was trying to think of different ways to track down her dog, named Lulu. The Maltese Yorkie had been missing for more than five days as of yesterday.
The story began a week ago when De Wet took 18-month-old Lulu to the dog parlour for a shampoo and cut – nothing out of the ordinary, as she had been a client at the parlour for years.
But when her husband went to fetch Lulu and came back with a different Maltese, she began panicking and headed straight to the parlour to get her dog back.
“They found out that they had swopped our dogs, my dog went to some lady and they’d given me the wrong dog,” De Wet told News sites
“Now the lady that’s got my dog didn’t write her name in the book, so there is no way of us to contact her.”
What made De Wet even more anxious was the fact that Lulu has a life-threatening liver problem.
“She needs to be on special food because she gets so sick, her liver problem is fatal,” she said.
“So we’ve been trying to get hold of this woman, I’ve put it on Facebook, I’m trying every way to get it to the media, maybe this lady is going to read it and realise she has our dog.”
De Wet said the owners of the dog parlour told her the woman had walked in to collect her dog and Lulu, who was ready for collection, was mistakenly handed to her.
Parlour owner Anka Anteglievic said she recalled a woman hurriedly coming into the parlour on Thursday morning to drop a dog off and then rushing off before her particulars were taken down.
“She was in a hurry, she didn’t leave a number, nothing. She said she was in a hurry and drove off.”
Upon realising the mistake, Anteglievic and her daughter Lana tried to assist De Wet in tracking the woman down.
They were surprised that after so many days, the woman had still not noticed that she had the wrong dog and come back to the parlour.
“I don’t understand. We waited [for her] on Friday, we thought she was at work maybe, but nothing. I can’t believe that from Thursday she hasn’t realised that she has the wrong dog, especially with stitches that have to be taken out.”
Both Anteglievic and De Wet hoped that the woman did not live very far from the Bedfordview parlour.
“She can’t be very far, she must be around here somewhere,” Anteglievic said.
Luckily yesterday, Lulu was returned to the parlour & the entire story explained.
Apparently the owner of the other pup had been ill & a friend was asked to collect his dog from the parlour mistakenly collected the wrong dog.
Needless to say, both pups are back home after their adventure & both owners are thankful!
