Jamesha Cruz was nervous to place her trust in a pet sitter from the popular app, Rover, for the first time. She left for a cruise the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
“The day that I left I sent a message and was like, ‘I’m literally having a hard time, I’m breaking down because I’m just leaving them in your care, and I’m going to be gone for so many days. This is the longest I’ve been without my Rocket and Jet,” Cruz told us.
Her worst fears would eventually come true. On Tuesday, while on board a ship with very limited cell phone service, she learned her dog, Jet, had been missing since the night before. The Rover sitter said he got loose. Cruz couldn’t get a flight back home until Thursday.
So her family put up flyers in the area where he was last seen, and checked the local shelters. As soon as Cruz got back to Baltimore, she put feet to the pavement.
“I had a bullhorn, walking up and down all the blocks and screaming into the bullhorn just everything that I would say to him – ‘Jet, Jet, let’s go get Rocket,’ his brother,” Cruz said.
Her worst fears would eventually come true. On Tuesday, while on board a ship with very limited cell phone service, she learned her dog, Jet, had been missing since the night before. The Rover sitter said he got loose. Cruz couldn’t get a flight back home until Thursday.
So her family put up flyers in the area where he was last seen, and checked the local shelters. As soon as Cruz got back to Baltimore, she put feet to the pavement.
“I had a bullhorn, walking up and down all the blocks and screaming into the bullhorn just everything that I would say to him – ‘Jet, Jet, let’s go get Rocket,’ his brother,” Cruz said.
A neighbor told her that a dog matching Jet’s description was hit by a car and killed that Monday, the same day he apparently got loose.
“So my sister and my family went the entire week searching for my Jet,” Cruz said, fighting back tears.
Cruz was told by witnesses the accident happened on North Avenue. An employee at Carey Hardware tells her he picked her dog up out of the middle of the street, and held him until an animal control officer arrived.
“I showed him pictures and he just broke down and he’s just like, I’m so sorry. I did; I stayed with your dog,” Cruz said.
Cruz says the worst part is not having closure. She wasn’t given the chance to identify Jet.
Baltimore Animal Control picked him up and took him to BARCS. But Cruz says his chip was never scanned before he was cremated,.
“There has to be a better process. This pain that I’m feeling inside, I can’t even describe to you. […] Thursday I was supposed to pick up both of my dogs. And I picked up one,” Cruz said.
BARCS says, “for animals that are already deceased when picked up by Animal Control, BARCS has no involvement in those protocols. Those deceased animals are entered into Animal Control’s database and placed directly into the shared freezer here on the shelter’s property for cremation. […] Per Maryland law, stray animals without identification are held for 72 hours. In the case of unidentified deceased animals, the outcome is cremation.”
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