Pepe the dog: stolen, found, and lost and FOUND in Shoreline

Pepe is back home in Ballard

Pepe's information was posted on December 3, 2011. His owner Danielle wrote to tell us that he had been found and agreed to share her story with us.

By Danielle Klinkhamer

Most of you already know that one night at the end of July our beloved little dog Pepe went missing. We had gone out for the evening on bicycles and learned later that there was a fireworks show in our neighborhood. We will never know exactly what happened, but guessed that one of these two things prompted Pepe to bolt from the house and he found a way out of the yard.

We tried most everything to recover him, but nothing ever came of it. We grieved extra because there was no closure. Not only did he never show up alive, but his remains were never found either. He was microchipped and had a tag with our number on it We came to assume the worst -- he was either with someone who wasn't returning him or he had met a lesser fate and got hit by a car or scarfed by neighborhood raccoons.

After 4 months we finally resolved to move on. We started to look into new dogs.

Then last Wednesday we got a phone call from a restricted number. The guy said he might have our dog. He had bought him outside of a grocery store in our neighborhood from some guy who sold him as a Min Pin puppy claiming he had just sold his littermate to someone else. On getting home the guy who bought him was surprised the dog had a collar with a number on it. He called the number. We quickly agreed to meet him. He named a specific location in Shoreline. We hurried there. He never showed up.

We knew then that Pepe was likely alive. Our hope came back. We hoped the guy would call back the next day, but he didn't. So we started to hunt. We went back to the Shoreline neighborhood where he told us to meet him. It seemed reasonable that he had lived nearby. We spied into back yards and through windows hoping we would find Pepe.

We knew we had to try to communicate with the caller, the old fashioned way. We made a pile of fliers with a good picture of Pepe, the statement that he was stolen, a cash reward offered and no questions asked -- we just wanted him back.

With help from friends we plastered the neighborhood around the meet spot and alerted the Shoreline Area News. We returned home feeling we had done all we could. All of you wished us luck and crossed your fingers.

We headed out to meet friends that night, sat at the pub and about when our beer arrived, the phone rang.

It was the guy, he had our dog. This time he called from his cell phone, told us where he lived and told us we could come get Pepe right then.

We did. The guy told us that he had become leery that he was being scammed after buying a dog which had a collar on it. He assumed that we were in cahoots with the guy that sold him the dog and it was a scam to re-sell the dog then guilt the buyer into returning it. That is why he didn't show up the first time. Then he saw our fliers in his nighborhood and the picture of Peps with the original collar on it. We paid him the reward. We got our beloved dog back, via perseverence and a good old fashioned grass-roots effort.

Pepe is OK, he seems healthy, maybe a little underexercised, but otherwise his same old hopelessly optimistic self. You have never seen a happier pup then when we turned the corner to our neighborhood and brought him home. And you have never seen happier dog owners than us right now. We are adoringly watching Pepe sleep in his home ... and cuddle with his new housemate Tika ... another Manchester Terrier.