Karen Aguilar watched with horror as she pulled up on February 27 to a puppy she rescued and homed with a woman who promised to care for the boonie dog. The puppy, a weeks-old boy named Duke, was bloodied and mangled on the road. He lived long enough for Ms. Aguilar to hold him tight and give him his last moments of love.
She said she had a feeling the woman (we’ll call her Kristi) who adopted Duke and his sister Mila, had done something terrible with the puppies because for days she had been following up with Kristi about the puppies, and Kristi was not responding to her. After a series of frantic text messages following Duke’s death, Kristi finally replied to her.
According to the WhatsApp text exchange that Ms. Aguilar shared publicly, Kristi admitted to dumping both puppies the day after she adopted and promised to care for them. She eventually told Ms. Aguilar that she dumped the puppies at Premier Apartments in Yigo. Premier Apartments fronts Marine Corps Drive.
“I put her and her brother on the left side,” Kristi messaged her, “there is a blanket on the gate side.”
Ms. Aguilar found Mila, whose leg was broken. She took Mila to Animal Medical Clinic in Harmon.
“[W]e are just waiting on Dr. [Kevin Malakooti] to come back on island so he can take a look at their X-rays and give us a quote for the surgery on both her front arms,” Ms. Aguilar wrote in an update Saturday. “For a fractured shoulder on one side and a fractured elbow on the other.” The bill for her veterinary care likely will be extraordinary, so Ms. Aguilar through the non profit organization Guahan Paws for Pets is raising money for Mila’s care. If you want to donate, you can PayPal your donation through the PayPal identifier [email protected].
After posting her ordeal along with Kristi’s identity and picture, several other members of the local animal rescue community said they encountered similar issues with Kristi.
“[W]e have vetted rescue members who posted photos of puppies she adopted last year – nothing to show for it now,” rescuer Renee Tiong said. “As well as another member who was commenting that she was actively trying to adopt more pups from her husband by the time of the original posting. I directed them to forward their evidence and correspondences to Karen, to add to the collection to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that’s she’s been habitually neglectful and irresponsible.”
Ms. Aguilar, according to Ms. Tiong, attempted to file a criminal complaint with the Guam Police Department against Kristi. The police officer at the Dededo precinct, however, told Ms. Aguilar that he could not take her complaint because Kristi’s neglect and abuse of two puppies is not a crime.
Guam law, however, makes it a criminal misdemeanor to neglect an animal in your care.
Despite the pages of evidence, including the transcript of the WhatsApp messages where Kristi admitted to neglecting then abandoning the puppies, the police officer who attended to Ms. Aguilar today (Monday), said that there is no evidence Kristi committed a crime. This is according to Ms. Tiong and to screen shots of Ms. Tiong’s messages with Ms. Aguilar.
“This is nothing new,” Ms. Tiong said about rescue community efforts to report crimes of animal abuse and neglect, only to be told by police that these are not crimes despite what the law says.
“I’m sobbing, this is so wrong,” Lei Ybanez commented in the thread of Ms. Aguilar’s post. “Poor puppy thinking he was going to a happy home only to be in the hands of the wrong people and abandoned/ killed the next day. This is devastating!”
Scores of other commenters expressed similar feelings. According to Ms. Tiong, the incident and several rescuers learning from Ms. Aguilar’s encounter with Kristi that this allegedly is not the first time Kristi has abandoned dogs she has agreed to home has caused many in the rescue community to rethink how they adopt animals out.
