Our Bentley Promise
Bentley was one of our first adoptions in Warrior Dog. He was a big, shy, Pyrenees Mix. The adopters were told about a martingale collar and the importance of the difference between an over head harness and a step in harness. It was not a required part of the adoption at that time… it was merely a topic that was touched on during the adoption.
Bentley was in his home with a regular buckle collar on, dragging a leash and his harness was taken off. Someone opened the door to the outside and Bentley moved towards the door to go outside. His owner grabbed his leash and Bentley pulled right out of his collar…off he went out the door with no gear on. We watched Bentley run the neighborhood scared and fleeing for the next five days. Our lost dog crew was on the scene right away along with The Retrievers, a volunteer lost dog team. We worked around the clock at a retrieval attempt and we were finally able to locate a safe place for his trap. We watched him that Saturday morning around the trap, gaining his trust as he moved around the trap and got used to it while it was not armed. Then he disappeared from our cameras for a few hours and we received a call from animal control that he had been picked up by MNDot and had been hit and killed by a car.
Heartbroken and crushed, Warrior Dog vowed to do whatever we can to keep our Warrior Dogs safe and educate our fosters and adopters by making it a requirement for all our Warrior Dogs to wear an over the head harness and a continuous loop martingale collar and to be double leashed. It is important that while the dog is in our care, we are doing everything we can to keep them safe and to teach our adopters the same… we are taking care of our Warrior Dogs in regards to safety, in the same way we take care of them with vetting, giving them shelter, nutrition and training. It is our Bentley Promise.
