Doodles, a Bichon-mix dog, was deliberately left on the streets of Arabian Ranches, in Dubai by her previous owner in August, 2013. Our friend who lives there found her and homed her for a week while desperately looking for her owners via veterinary contacts and animal rescue organisations. Finally, a vet called saying that Doodle, originally named Bailey, was registered with them and gave my friend the contact details of the owner.
Our friend contacted the number numerous times and left her contact details, too, but the owner did not respond. Hence, she assumed that they didn’t want Doodles and had abandoned her.
We took her on to give her a permanent home and slowly realised that she was deaf. I didn’t give up and tracked her previous owners as I didn’t think they would do such a thing deliberately. I found the family’s information and had to call them to see if they wanted her back.
With a heavy heart and after consulting my two children I called the owners. The woman of the house answered and she was taken aback by my questions. She tried to defend her actions, but admitted that they didn’t want the dog that they homed for two years.
She told me: “The dog is deaf!”
I was very angry at the woman for her heartless action in abandoning a family member on the street. Having known Doodles, I can say that she’s such a homely dog who would never have survived in the summer heat on the streets. And her inability to hear, would have simply killed her on the road. How can somebody abandon a helpless creature?
This was the story of how we homed Doodles. However, she wasn’t meant to be with us for long. Unfortunately, after just a little over two months, in November, when my husband and I were at university, my househelp took her out for a walk and may not have noticed that the dog’s body leash had come off from one leg.
Doodles saw a cat and escaped from the leash to chase after it and we haven’t found her since. We have searched every single corner of the entire area that we live in, which is Al Taawun area in Sharjah. We asked a lot of people in our neighbourhood, put up posters on notice boards and even spoke to the Sharjah Municipality workers in the area. No one had spotted her. Some of the people we spoke to were rude and seemed unaffected by our emotions. It was clear that even if they had spotted her, no one stopped to help.
The reader is based in Sharjah.
