Dead, then missing, then adopted: How a woman lost her beloved Pomeranian

Angela Andrade wants her dog back.

In the past month, the Delmar resident believed her beloved 8-year-old Pomeranian was dead, and then lost. This week she discovered the pooch has been adopted by someone else.

But his new owner doesn't want to give him up. 

“He’s my companion,” Andrade said through tears. “My husband’s on the road trucking three months at a time. It’s just me and Jakey.”

It started with a vacation. Andrade went to Massachusetts for a family wedding in late October, leaving Jakey at her father’s house for a few days, she said.

When she returned, her father had bad news.

“He came in and said, ‘I gotta tell you something,’” she recalled. “And then he said [Jakey] had died on that Friday before, but he didn't want to tell me while I was in Massachusetts.”

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It was a tough blow for Andrade, who said her adult children had given Jakey to her on Christmas Eve eight years ago, when the pup was so small he could sit in her hands.

The retired nurse said she and her companion have been through a lot. Jakey gets seizures and has many allergies. And Andrade has her own share of health conditions.

Jakey knew when Andrade was sick, her daughter-in-law Amanda Andrade said. And Angela Andrade knew Jakey’s own ways of telling her when he wanted a treat.

A few days after she returned from the wedding, Angela Andrade tried to move on. She packed away Jakey’s doggy clothes and toys and made her way to her father’s backyard, where he had told her Jakey was buried.

But something didn’t seem right.

“The ground wasn’t turned up,” Angela Andrade said. “It didn’t look like a grave.”

It turned out, Jakey wasn’t dead.

Amanda Andrade posted a picture of Jakey on Facebook, saying the dog was lost and asking friends to help find him.

When Angela Andrade was still on vacation in October, a neighbor of her father had found the pooch, running around on Columbia and Rider roads.

Karen Baker, the neighborhood dog-lover, caught Jakey and knocked on more than a dozen doors. Nobody recognized the little white dog, so she posted about him on a Facebook page for lost pets in the Delmar area.

She said she knew it was someone’s pet because he was well-groomed and was wearing a flea collar.

“I kept him for probably four to five hours and I couldn’t bring him home because I have four German shepherds,” Baker said.

She turned Jakey over to an animal welfare officer, who took the pup to the Brandywine Valley SPCA shelter in Georgetown. Baker felt so bad for the dog she went to the shelter and brought him a blanket that night.

On Tuesday, the Andrades thought they had caught a break.

Someone showed Baker’s Facebook post to Amanda Andrade. Angela Andrade rushed to the SPCA, threw her arms around an employee and said she was there to get her Jakey.

That’s when she found out her beloved dog had already been adopted. The SPCA would not release the identity of the adopter but later called Angela Andrade to say the new owner did not want to give him back, she said.

The Brandywine Valley SPCA could not immediately be reached for comment. The News Journal has also reached out to the Delaware Office of Animal Welfare officer who questioned Baker about the dog.

The Andrades are hoping their story will reach Jakey’s new owner. Angela Andrade has spent the past few days distraught over losing Jakey.

She said she hasn’t been able to speak with her father, to ask why he told her Jakey had died.

A Facebook post that Baker made explaining the situation has been shared more than 600 times. A Delaware rescue organization, Doggone Happy Animal Rescue, has even offered the anonymous new owner a free adoption of one of its own dogs if he or she returns Jakey. 

“We're just hoping this lady that has the dog maybe has a change of heart,” Amanda Andrade said. “He means a lot to our kids. He's been here since they've been born. It's not just hurting [Angela], it's hurting a whole family.”

Contact Jeanne Kuang at jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2476. Follow her on Twitter at @JeanneKuang.

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