Have you seen Rza? Her family contacted CHS and is putting up posters around Capitol Hill and the Central District in a search for the dog after she was stolen from in front of the Broadway Whole Foods on Tuesday.
UPDATE: The Lost Dogs of King County group reports Rza is safe after being spotted in a parked vehicle that had been reported stolen.
Original report: Reports of dognapping concerns around the globe have been a staple of the pandemic though there are usually no solid numbers to back up the stories. Petnappings are certainly not new on Capitol Hill where CHS has reported on thefts involving pets left outside stores and restaurants over the years.
Here’s one from 2014 that had a happy ending.
Posting an offer for a cash reward can also lead to problems.
The demand for dogs remains high but has fallen from the surge in adoptions early in the pandemic when stay at home restrictions were in place.
For Rza, her family says she was gone in about three minutes as security video shows two men take the dog while she waited outside the store.
The family is now looking for Rza and the grey or silver Honda Accord with no plates believed to have been involved in the dognapping.
If you can help provide information about Rza or have seen her, contact information for the family is in the photos on this post.
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Sad that we live in a place that you cannot leave you dog or bike or child alone for a couple minutes. There are many major cities in Europe where it is comon to see people enjoy a meal while there baby human or animal are left unattended.
This is the worst example of victim-blaming I’ve seen in awhile. People should be able to walk their dogs and leave them outside while conducting business in a store without having to worry that their pet will be stolen. They should NOT take their dogs inside the store with them. Indeed, most grocery stores have a policy (whether they are enforcing it these days or not) of only permitting service animals, so when people bring their pets inside with them, they are not only being rude to other customers, but also, technically, trespassing.
And yes, Seattle is not Mayberry. But we used to have far less crime, both relative to other cities and in absolute terms. IMHO, the reason things have gone so far downhill—to the point that if anything valuable isn’t bolted to the ground, it will be stolen within minutes—is simply because we have decided to minimize and tolerate a shocking amount of bad behavior. But I would like to think that folks still have the capacity to be outraged at people stealing someone else’s pet, which is such an incredibly awful thing to do, rather than simply saying something like, “why didn’t you keep him with you at all times.”
In any event, I hope these thieves are caught and that Rza is recovered.
Dog owners bear ultimate responsibility for the safety of their dog. If you leave a dog unattended in a public place, dognapping is just one of many negative outcomes that can happen. It is no stretch to say that what the owners did here was extremely negligent. Hopefully they will learn from this and not leave Rza in such a compromised position in the future.
Victim blaming in this case would be blaming Rza. The owners are seriously at fault here. They are not the victims.