PORT ANGELES — After careful evaluation of pictures he took with his cell phone, Jeff Thayer said Monday that Oreo is not the dog who killed his dog Ringo on Wednesday.
Oreo, whom Port Angeles Police officers picked up a block from Thayer’s West Seventh Street home on Sunday, was still at the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society on Monday afternoon, but his owner Stacey Wall said police had told her she would be contacted soon to take him home.
“It is such a coincidence that there was a big black and white dog that got into our yard on Sunday just like the big black and white dog that came on Wednesday and got Ringo,” Thayer said.
“But the more I looked at the pictures, and the more my wife looked at them, the more we realized that it wasn’t the right dog.
“It is a little scary, because that means that the one that did get our dog is still out there.”
Thayer, who was present when a dog killed Ringo, said that the markings on Oreo are different from the ones on the dog that attacked his small dog.
“The one that came in here had some white on the sides that Oreo didn’t have,” Thayer said.
“And that dog also had a short tail, not like the long one of the one they picked up.”
Thayer called police on Sunday saying he had spotted the dog and had positively identified him.
But later, after evaluating the situation, he said that he noticed too many differences between the dogs.
Wall, who said she lives on the 1800 block of West Sixth Street, said that she was glad to see Oreo’s name cleared.
“My dog is not vicious — I didn’t think there was any way he would have killed that other dog,” she said.
She said she didn’t know how Oreo had escaped on Sunday, but that she would look into it.
“I was shocked and so upset when they came [Sunday] and said he did that,” Wall said.
“I’m so relieved.”
Officer Erik Smith said that Oreo should be able to go home soon.
“He has some outstanding vaccinations that they need to take care of, but as soon as that is done, he can be released,” Smith said.
Thayer had reported that a dog that looked like a pit bull-boxer mix leaped over his 6-foot fence early last Wednesday morning and killed one of his two Pekingese pomeranians.
Wall said Oreo’s mother was a husky but that she didn’t know what the father was.
“He’s just a mutt,” she said.
Smith said the investigation will continue.
The city has laws that prohibit pets from running loose without a leash, he said.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call the Port Angeles Police Department at 360-452-4545.
__________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
