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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Crime Seattle Police Investigate Dognapping!

Posted by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee on Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 6:10 PM

A couple in Maple Leaf contacted Seattle Police last week to report a possible dognapping.

According to a police report, the couple told officers they'd left their home for a few hours on February 14th, and when they returned, their dogs were gone. There were no obvious signs of a break in and nothing else was taken.

Earlier this month, the report says, the couple had hired a dog sitter to take care of their pets while they were out of town.

The couple recruited a dogsitter from a local dog grooming business. The report notes that when the couple asked the woman for her home address, she told them "she did not have one." Nevertheless, the couple left their dogs with the woman and skipped town on February 6th.

When the couple returned three days later, the report says, they found that the dogsitter had spent $150 of her own money to purchase "specialty food, treats, chew toys and equipment for the dogs." cleaned the couple's house "from top to bottom" and left them a note "chastising the couple for their substandard choice in dog food."

Days later, the couple began receiving "non-stop text and voicemail messages" from the dog sitter, asking about the dogs and offering care tips. In the report, the couple describes the dogsitter as "disturbed" and a "fanatic."

The couple says they have not spoken with the woman since the dogs disappeared.

According to the report, the dogsitter recently started her own dog care business after being laid off from her job.

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Comments (18) RSS

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Don't blame the victim...yada yada yada, but a stranger says they don't have a home address and you decide it's a good idea to let them stay in your home while your gone...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!

Posted by Frank Rizzo on February 19, 2009 at 6:19 PM

to the fixed-gear hipmobile, hipboy! the slog has alterted us to a lame yuppie who must be taught a lesson for her lame ways! we will harsh upon her so harshly that shell never forget!

Posted by Go away! 'Batin'! on February 19, 2009 at 6:32 PM

Why do I find this so amusing? Even without the picture, I think this crazy woman is awesome. I hope she steals more dogs and sells them to science to pay for more expensive dog shit for the next dogs she steals and sends to science.

Posted by every hero has their thorns on February 19, 2009 at 6:44 PM

She boil BABIES when she gets mad?

Posted by (she's a hobo) on February 19, 2009 at 7:15 PM

5 Comment Pulled

Remember when spam used to make sense? When people actually wrote prose attempting to actually sell a product instead of just having a program that strings together random words and phrases, sometimes with no link or even mention of a product.

Posted by sgiffy on February 19, 2009 at 8:42 PM

sgiffy:

It's Google bombing. Google (and other search engines) computes page relevance in a large part from the significance of pages linking to you (i.e., "backlinks," hence the original name of Google, "Backrub"). This value is called "PageRank" by Google, but it's allegedly some sort of principal eigen-somethingorother.

Anywho, spammers got this great idea that they could place links to their pages on prominent pages that allow commenting (like the Stranger) and thus derive a bit higher PageRank by being linked to from a prominent site (Google may or may not be clever enough to discern significant links from insignificant ones).

Even more clever, as you will note from the above, each link goes to a slightly different URL with, nonetheless, the same keywords in the URL. This is because the spammer actually creates a network of sites, all linking to each other (and thus all boosting each other's PageRank) and all with a set of common keywords between them, thus boosting each other's relevance to that keyword (since relevance to a given topic is, again, determined from linking pages as well as the page itself).

At a guess, it looks like they're trying to gain prominence on searches related to World of Warcraft gold.

Anyway, that's the idea. Pretty crafty, actually.

Posted by Dan on February 19, 2009 at 9:07 PM

Me thinks the crazy dog babysitter lady obviously took the dogs. Weird.

Posted by kristinbellkittyDon'tStealDogs! on February 19, 2009 at 9:22 PM

hmmm. i'm willing to bet the culprit shops at a few high-end dog places, so the cops should bring sketches by those establishments, right?

Posted by mike on February 19, 2009 at 9:38 PM

This is why I board my dog at the vet when I go out of town.

Posted by genevieve on February 19, 2009 at 10:27 PM

What's with the gratuitous exclamation?

Posted by Puncuation Po-Po on February 19, 2009 at 11:07 PM

@11: It's an exciting event!

Posted by eustaceia on February 19, 2009 at 11:13 PM

I liked this post. That's it.

Posted by Mifflin & Bassett on February 19, 2009 at 11:51 PM

Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon. I hope that whacko is caught.

Posted by Chris on February 20, 2009 at 1:00 AM

Ugh, that's awful. I'd be devistated if my dogs were stolen, but at the same time- she didn't have an address and somehow they thought letting her stay in their house was a good plan? Did they get references?

Posted by AC on February 20, 2009 at 1:16 AM

It's a fine line from "I'll 'rescue' your dog because you keep it outside sometimes" to "I'll 'rescue' your dog because your dog food choice is marginally suboptimal." This person has a serious superiority complex. Mudede needs do write about this.

Posted by oljb on February 20, 2009 at 5:16 AM

@7
Everybody knows susanexpress.com is the gold standard for WoW gold.

Posted by Bohica on February 20, 2009 at 7:55 AM

Bloody Vikings!

Posted by the amazing jim on February 20, 2009 at 9:52 AM