HOUSTON – Two Houston sisters are devastated that their lost dog, Byron, will not be coming home. Instead, he was adopted by another family.
The two said they tried everything to be responsible dog owners by getting him microchipped. More than a year later, they realize Byron had been found, but they said they never got the call to pick him up.
“It’s something you don’t want anyone else to go through,” Brianna Marino, 17, said.
Brianna and her sister Savannah Marino, 25, were devastated when their beloved Maltese Poodle, Byron, escaped their parents’ yard ew Year’s Eve before the start of 2020. The family was devastated.
“We love Byron. Byron is our family,” Savannah said.
They know just about everything about Byron.
“He’s a Maltipoo. We got him in January 2017,” Brianna said.
“He was originally our uncle’s [dog], one of his [dog’s] pups, and we were there when he was bottle feeding,” Savannah said.
“He was basically my emotional support dog... He slept with me every night,” Brianna said.
When the two came home to find him missing, they acted right away.
“We immediately noted him as missing on our microchip app,” Savannah said. “We noted him as missing through Nextdoor, Ring, neighborhood... everywhere we could possibly think of.”
Brianna kept the dog’s information in her wallet in case she ever needed it. She’d look around the neighborhood after any sign of a lost dog sighting tip. However, they never received a call that their dog was found. Because Byron was microchipped, they held out hope.
“There were many sleepless nights where I would blame myself, and I would just cry,” Brianna said.
However, after having a dream that she and Byron were reunited, Brianna got an inkling to check the microchip account. They were shocked.
“When we looked in the microchip account, he was no longer attached to us,” Savannah said.
They looked into it more, thinking it was possibly a mistake.
“It listed him as being owned by someone else now. We immediately started being like ‘What?’ " Savannah said.
They said the microchip company told them that the dog was adopted.
“[The company told us] Poodle Rescue of Houston had uploaded his chip number and given him to someone else,” Savannah said.
Savannah and her sister started to dig into the records, connecting the microchip numbers with a dog that they said was adopted in February 2020. The dog was renamed. They reached out to the Poodle Rescue of Houston to get answers.
“The Poodle Rescue of Houston Basically said, ‘the new owner does not want to give back we’re not going to continue this conversation,” Savannah said.
A member of the Poodle Rescue of Houston told KPRC 2 they tried but the contacts for the lost dog were “unreachable.” The dog, ultimately deemed abandoned, was adopted.
However, the Marinos said, they never got a call that their dog was ever found.
“There is no way we would have been unreachable. We even had a false positive that Byron was found... We know our information was up to date. If they had tried to reach out at all, we would have been there,” Savannah said.
Now, while they don’t believe the new owners of their dog did anything wrong, they hope the new owners give Byron back.
“It’s our family member and we had him for longer,” Savannah said. “We’re hoping that the new family can find it in their hearts to give Byron back to us.”
The Marinos said the Poodle Rescue of Houston offered them a new dog, but they said they declined because they want Byron back.