Expensive Dogs New Target for Thieves on Upper East Side?
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Last Thursday, a 31-year-old woman was walking Rudolph, her 3-year-old dachshund, on 91st Street between First and Second avenues when the dog eagerly approached a stranger on the street. After the stranger bent down to pet the dog, “She unlocked the leash. And then she just grabbed the dog,” Rudolph’s owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said.
The two got into a tussle, police said, and the suspect grabbed the owner’s head and punched her several times. “We were, like, fighting over the dog,” the owner said. She said she managed to hold onto Rudolph as a witness helped fend off the attacker.
“Who would believe something like that that could happen?” she said.
A dachshund can cost more than $450, according to breeder Robin Trynoski of R&R Kennels in upstate New York.
Police arrested Leyla Borlak, 33, at the scene and charged her with attempted robbery. Ms. Borlak was taken to two city hospitals for psychiatric evaluation, according to the office of the New York County district attorney.
Two days later, police said, a 73-year-old man reported that he had left his fox red Labrador tied up at the northwest corner of 63rd Street and Third Avenue and when he returned the dog was gone. A fox red Labrador, which is actually yellow, is rare and can cost anywhere between $700 and $2,000, a national Labrador breeder, John Willson of John Willson’s Fox Red Labradors, said.
Police have not apprehended a suspect in the case.
Dogs are not the only targets in such cases. On June 18, Valentina Torres, 29, was arrested for stealing a Siamese kitten from a West Village pet store, the district attorney’s office said. The feline was reportedly valued at more than $1,200.Her explanation for the theft: “I just wanted the cat,” the criminal complaint indicates. She pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
It is difficult to gauge the scope of the pet theft problem. The New York Police Department could not easily provide animal theft statistics because it does not keep separate records for the crime. One pet detective, John Keane of Sherlock Bones, said he investigates hundreds of cases a year.
There are many reasons why pets disappear. One New York City police official said pets often become the subject of custody disputes or are swiped and used as bargaining tools for reward money. Some dogs are stolen to be used in illegal dog fights or to be sold to a laboratory for experimentation. In some cases, a well-meaning caretaker falls in love with a pet and refuses to return it. Or a pet may simply wander away.
Mr. Keane said a breed’s popularity is subject to fads. When a pug appeared in the movie “Men in Black,” pugs were all the rave among thieves, Mr. Keane said. Chihuahuas were popular during the time a Chihuahua starred in a series of Taco Bell commercials. In general, however, Mr. Keane said, “Pit Bulls are very much in demand in a lot of different cities. … People like them and they are a kind of status symbol.”
Dog theft can be prevented, the co-executive director of the Humane Society of New York, Susan Richmond, said, by not leaving your dog unattended “even for a second.”
Jane Hoffman, the president of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, a nonprofit organization that assists the city on issues of animal care, said dog owners by law must provide their animals with identification.
She also suggested having a microchip, which operates like a barcode, implanted between the dog’s shoulder blades. A global positioning system for dogs is reportedly soon expected to be on the market.