Wants to Know
Dog accidentally euthanized after microchip mishap
Owner wants answers
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Losing a family pet can be traumatic, but a Lehigh Acres woman says for her, it has been ten times worse because of how her dog died. Lee County Domestic Animal Service put her pit-bull, Coal, down in late June because of a problem with the animal’ Video by fox4now.com
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LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. - Losing a family pet can be traumatic, but a Lehigh Acres woman says for her, it has been ten times worse because of how her dog died.
Lee County Domestic Animal Service put her pit-bull, Coal, down in late June because of a problem with the animal’s microchip.
"I've been crying every single day," said Cassandra O’Rourke. "He was so close to me."
The problem started when animal services tried to find the owner based on the information on Coal’s microchip, but received no response.
"We attempted to contact the owner that was attached to that microchip. We assumed the animal was unwanted and abandoned," said Lee County Domestic Animal Services spokesperson Ria Brown.
Turns out the information on Coal microchip belonged to someone else due to an error on the part of the clinic that put in the device.
The doctor at Lighthouse Pet Clinic told Fox 4 by phone that someone in his office made an error… resulting in him putting information on the microchip that belonged to another woman from Cape Coral.
"I don't understand how they could have entered in the wrong information," said O’Rourke.
She is upset that animal services did not catch the mistake in the first place when searching for the owner, but the organization says there was no way from them to know who the correct owner was.
"When she came in she didn't give us any microchip information. There was nothing for us to link again that dog to her during the time period it was here," said Ria Brown.
O’Rourke insists animal service could have just adopted out the dog instead euthanized it, but Brown says that was not possible because Coal had ringworms and other issues.
"(It had) other poor body conditions...it just wasn't an animal suitable for adoption."
Meantime, O’Rourke is still looking for answers and justice for her beloved pet.
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