‘I was scared’: Owner of pet shop in NSW’s north-east says he was afraid of ‘wild animals’ when he opened his shop in 2006

Posted January 15, 2019 04:12:07A dog walker in Northamptonshire has spoken out about being frightened when he first went into a dog park in 2006, when he said he spotted a dog with a distinctive design on its tail.

Owner of Pet Shop in Northampton, Mike Stroud, said he was initially worried about the dog’s identity, and was unsure whether it was a wild animal or an indoor one.

He said he thought it was probably an indoor dog until he saw the distinctive design and was worried he might be “stalking” the dog.

“I’m not a dog person, but I did notice something was wrong with the animal,” Mr Stroud said.

“So I rang up the owners and I asked if they’d seen a wild dog or not.”

And they said ‘no, we’ve never seen a dog before, we’d never seen anything like that before’.

“I said ‘well, what’s the problem?

What’s the animal?’ and they said they’d never had an animal before, they’d only seen a cat.”

They were so upset and they were so confused and I told them it’s probably a dog.

But they didn’t believe me.

“It was like a scene out of a horror movie.”

That dog had this design, it was very distinctive, and I was very concerned about that.

“Mr Stroud and his family moved to Northamontonshire in 2004, and he was worried about what was going on.”

You know, I was afraid that if the dog got out I would be in trouble,” he said.

Mr Stroyts dog, Tootsie, was adopted in 2018.

He had never seen wild animals before and it took him some time to learn to trust the dogs, and even then, he had a difficult time understanding what the dog was thinking.”

Tootsie was just very calm, it seemed to know what it was doing,” he explained.”

But it wasn’t really understanding what I was doing, it just knew what I did and it didn’t really understand what I meant.

“If Tootsies tail went up, I’d just be looking at Tootsi, and then he’d just turn around and walk away.”

Mr Florys son has also been scared by the dog, Mr Stroys son, Alex, said.

He was just a bit scared when he saw Toots, and the next day when he went to pick up his father, he was a bit more worried about Toots.

“When we picked up Toots and saw the design on his tail, it’s really weird,” Mr Flory said.

Topics:animal-welfare,animal-behaviour,human-interest,welfare-and-imprisonment,southern-africa