Opinion Poll
 

A guy went for a hike in the Colorado mountains about a week ago. He took a friend and his dog with him. While up on a high mountain, he ran into trouble, so he managed to get his friend down and left the dog(German shepherd) on the mountain. About 8 days later another guy was hiking on the mountain and he found the dog in bad shape, but still alive. The hiker tried to rescue the dog, but it was too heavy for him to carry down, so he went back to the bottom and helped organize a rescue. A bigger group of people went back up the mountain and rescued the dog.
Now the owner wants the dog back. What do you think? Think he should get the dog back?

1) Yes
2) No
3) No, and he should be put back on the mountain for 8 days ;)

Today's Talker: Dog Rescued After Eight Days on Mt. Bierstadt

No, not if the rescuer wants to keep the dog.

No, he doesn't deserve to have her back. He made absolutely no attempt for 8 days to get her off that mountain. Anyone that truly loved their dog would have tried to get her help!

:umno: I can't say what I actually think about this "person" without getting banned.
But the people who found her didn't even know her. Yet they moved heaven and earth to get her down and to the medical help she needed.
The "person" who left her up there should be charged and left up there for the same 8 days with no shoes or clothes and no food or water. At the very least.

Absolutely not. If he really wanted her, he would have done what the pair who found her did eight days after he left her up there.

Several of the eight rescuers want her -- they should decide who gets her, and he should pick up the bill.

Why didn't the dog come down when the men did?

The dog belongs to the original owner. There is no realistic dispute about that.

Where there could be a dispute is in compensation for the team who rescued the dog. I suspect that salvage laws apply here, since they effectively salvaged the dog owner's property. The rescue team could probably prevail in a lawsuit demanding fair compensation for the salvage effort.

Of course the rescuers could offer to accept ownership of the dog as compensation, but the owner would have to agree.

The dog had injured paws and could not walk.

Yes, he should get the dog back. Not because he owns the dog or because he deserves the dog, but because the dog is likely to be ridiculously happy to see him again and would rather be with their owner than strangers.

If there's any justice in this world I hope for the owner to endure the same hardship he forced on the dog. Just like the people who throw their pets out on country roads to be injured by cars, eaten by coyotes, or slowly starve to death. The excuse "I just don't have the heart to shoot them" doesn't wash. If you don't have the heart to shoot them, but condemn them to a slow painful death, you're not just a coward, you're stupid.

The dog was abandoned plain and simple. If it hadn't been rescued it would have died. Animals have been taken away from owners for less.

I can see having to leave her there while they went back down the mountain. My first words on seeing a human would have been, "My dog is up there and she needs help NOW."

Good for him for getting himself all safe and sound, rested and fed...and forgetting his most loyal companion who was probably heartbroken and afraid up there by herself. :(

Take the dog away, she probably was so happy to see the rescuers that she forgot her original faithless human.

Now, am I the only one who caught that the couple who found her taped her feet, couldn't carry her...and FINISHED THEIR CLIMB before coming back down and asking for help???

I have no doubt that the rescue workers would claim abandonment if they were sued by the dog owner, but if their state has salvage laws I doubt that their argument would prevail in court.

The classic example is that of scuttled boats after a hurricane. Salvage operators can raise those boats, then ask for reasonable compensation from boat owners for their salvage efforts. Depending on the condition of the boat after salvage the owner might refuse to pay the compensation, in which case the salvor can keep the boat. But in most jurisdictions they are required to make diligent efforts to contact the rightful owners of salvaged boats. Failing to do so might result in a civil lawsuit for "conversion", or even a criminal allegation of theft.

But the salvage operator can't make a legitimate claim of abandonment because the situation was created by an emergency condition, which would make salvaging boats and keeping them for themselves indistinguishable from looting. The same logic also applies in the case of the dog rescue. I think the law will require that the rescue workers turn the dog over to the rightful owner, but the law will also allow the rescue workers to demand reasonable compensation for the efforts, up to the monetary value of the dog.

An update on the story: Man who left dog on 14er faces animal cruelty charges

I'll bet he'll end up paying the vet bill, then surrendering the dog to avoid prosecution.

I would say no. He should be prosecuted for abandoning his dog and not contacting a rescue group or animal control or someone for help. Now, if he had contacted authorities for help, and they refused, then he did what he could do and should not be prosecuted.
The people who did rescue the dog should sue the guy for repayment though, and if the man won't pay then take the dog as payment. And that would effectively rescue the dog from the owner who abandoned him.

You have to wonder why he didn't tell someone to try and retrieve the dog. In a sense he threw the dog away when he left it to die. I don't think he'll get the dog back.

Three.

"The classic example is that of scuttled boats after a hurricane."

I'd say a more appropriate example would be that of a parent who abuses or neglects a child(or an animal owner who abuses or neglects his animals). Authorities routinely remove children from people who do that, so it would hardly be a big change to remove his "ownership" rights to the dog. :ashamed:

While it's true that animal activists have lobbied to give dogs rights, and it's illegal to abuse a dog, dogs are still property in the eyes of the law.

Yes, they are, but there have been MANY cases of animal abuse in which that "property" was removed from the owners. I've seen many news stories of people with hundreds of dogs, cats, or other animals who lost all of them when they were charged with abuse/neglect. I've also seen plenty of instances(way too many) of horse owners being charged with neglect/abuse and losing their "property".

This is what gets me.

Total strangers put more effort into saving this dog than he did!

Evidently he's been charged with animal cruelty. If he's convicted then he deserves to lose the dog.

Of the three options provided I would have to go with number three. No he cant have the dog back, and he should be chained to the mountainside and abandoned and allowed to die in the elements just like he did to the dog.

Ya think?

he DESERVES to lose the dog. if he's convicted, it just means the legal system will have caught up to the community in knowing what's right.

My problem is that I haven't heard the owner's side of the story yet.

Dog owners lose their rights to their dogs all the time for neglect and cruelty. This person should lose their rights.

Neither have I.

I love how so many folks can make such harsh judgements about what he did, and tell us smugly what they would have done, when they weren't in his situation, don't have all the details of what he went through, or why he left the dog in the first place.

He may have had a very good reason for his actions, or he may be a dirtbag of the highest order. I don't know, and neither does anyone on this forum.

This is about a LIVING ANIMAL, not some inanimate object.

He abandoned the dog , pure and simple.

I heard on the news he left the dog because it was injured and a storm was coming in. If true, human life always comes before animal life, so I don't blame him and think it's absolutely ridiculous for him to be charged with animal cruelty. Now, he should probably have alerted the authorities about the situation, but honestly if I was in charge and someone came to me with this, I would assume the dog was dead rather than risk human life to rescue it.

i have trucked my greyhound across the country 4 times because i moved. when he get's stupid on a hunt & refuses to come in i stay out all night & if needed took time off work. I have carried hurt & half dead 100# hunting dogs over 10 miles in mountains & swamps in bitter cold and blistering heat and came back the next day for guns & gear. so unless both his legs were broke AND all his buddies told him to go pound sand when he asked for help, the owners side of the story is that he is a crappy excuse for a human being.

Neither have I, but he'll have to come up with a pretty good excuse for why he did nothing to save that dog for 8 days(nothing as in not trying to go get the dog, or tell somebody else about the dog, or ANYTHING. :whistlin:

I think that leaving her there temporarily in order to help his friend was the appropriate action to take. However, upon getting himself and his friend to safety, he could have mentioned that his dog needed help, sent someone else up to get her, or at least sent someone else to put a bullet in her head. Leaving an animal to die slowly, when it has been your faithful companion for years, is not an acceptable choice IMHO. He doesn't deserve to have her back.

#4. I don't care.