Sadly, most of us can’t converse with animals (though that doesn’t stop us from trying). But unless you’re Dr. Dolittle, you’re pretty much at a dead end.
But an adorable five-month-old Australian shepherd who goes by the name Vango managed to get his urgent message across to a human – and in doing so, he rescued himself from the hands of dognappers!
The smart pooch walked into a store with his dognappers and cleverly alerted the store owners that something wasn’t right.
Vango kept constantly barking and demanding the store owner’s attention.
It all happened at an animal store in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada.
Yves Jodoin works as a staff member at the store is also a dog trainer at Au Royaume des Animaux. He definitely knows a thing or two about the behavior of dogs and was quickly able to figure out that the whole situation seemed very off.
At first, Yves simply thought that the pup was hungry and was simply barking because he wanted a treat.
Posted by Josée Francoeur onMonday, January 18, 2021
But when Vango kept on barking even after he received a cookie, Yves started to get more and more suspicious.
“The dog was barking, the dog was poking and he really wanted my attention,” Jodoin said to CBC Canada. “I was giving the dog cookies, but the dog was still barking.”
When the couple who came into the store with the dog couldn’t even answer basic questions about him, the staff members realized that they probably weren’t his owners.
So Yves started to ask more and more basic questions about the dog, and it only got worse.
The couple didn’t even know how old he was, whether he was sterilized or not, what kind of food he usually liked, or where he came from.
“They were evading the questions,” the man recalls.
Luckily, another staff member, Lydia Blouin, also noticed that something was off.
Posted by Josée Francoeur onThursday, April 22, 2021
Lydia checked local social media pages, to see if there was anything about missing pets. It didn’t take long before they found Vango’s picture online, as he was reported missing.
The dog was apparently last seen at home in Buckingham, only a couple of hours before he arrived at the store.
Yves then had a sudden realization – he already knew Vango because he trained him when he was still a puppy!
“At that point I said, ‘Vango, come!’ And the dog was reacting, he was jumping,” the dog trainer. “All along he was barking and poking, trying to say, ‘Hello, I’m not the dog they say I am.'”
The couple had no other choice but to confess that it wasn’t their dog.
They claimed that they found Vango in the woods, and wanted to keep him as their own support animal because the woman couldn’t afford a dog and was in poor health. The woman in question was of course, busted, and Yves managed to convince her to leave the animal at the store.
The staff member then called Vango’s real owner, Josée Francoeur.
Posted by Josée Francoeur onTuesday, January 19, 2021
Vango’s real owner was completely in shock, as she knew that her pooch wouldn’t just run away on his own. One moment, Vango was in the fenced yard, and the next moment, he was just gone.
“Is it possible that someone took him? And I was thinking, ‘Who could do that? It’s impossible!”
Posted by Josée Francoeur onTuesday, January 19, 2021
The phone call from Yves was a complete relief.
“I can’t talk about it without crying,” she said. “Imagine, If those people didn’t go to that pet store, I would have lost my dog forever.”
Vango wasn’t microchipped, but Josée already made an appointment to get it done and prevent things like this in the future.
Posted by Josée Francoeur onThursday, October 1, 2020
As for the dognappers, she filed an official complaint at the local police department.
“I don’t want to cause them problems. We don’t know why they did it. But at the same time, they took my baby,” the owner. “I want to discourage others from doing this.”
Thanks to Vango’s clever behavior, he is now in the hands of his loving owner again. What a smart pooch!
Be sure to scroll down below to see the interview with the pet store clerks who saved the day.
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