OK, so Scraps is now gone all night Sat, all day Sunday (I call but few places are open) and now Monday morning I start making calls again.  The Islip town shelter gives me the name and number of a young woman who picked up a dog of similar description late Sat. and I call the woman around 10am.  She grills me a bit on describing the dog and asks me for papers (for which I have none), but our convo about how/where the dog usually gets out and where she found her less than 500 feet from my home seems to convince her that the dog is indeed mine.  She agrees to go home and bring me the dog.  I tell my son who had been devastated and he is quickly relieved.

I am waiting for nearly an hour and a half, when I text her that I'd be happy to come pick her up if she prefers.  I then get a call from an older man who grills me about the dog and says that the young woman has no transportation and that he'd have to bring the dog by when he gets home from work that evening.  This is frustrating, but the thought that the young woman might not feel comfortable interacting with a strange man makes sense and we agree to meet up when he gets home from work.  Then, a half-hour later, an older woman calls me and starts grilling me about the dog, including asking about identifying characteristics.  Now I am getting annoyed.  I ask her who she is and the answer was the young girl's mother.  Finally I say to her, please have the gentleman I spoke to call me.

Next, a half-hour later I get the young girl responding to my text message, telling me that what she'd really like is paperwork or a picture of the dog, explaining that the dog is really awesome and she wants to make sure the dog is really mine because there are a lot of bad people out there.  I get a picture from my wife and send it to her via text, explaining that considering our first conversation and how she "took" the dog less than 500 feet from my home, that my thankfullness and appreciation was turning to frustration.  There is no response.

It's around 2pm and I call my wife ready to take this to the next level.  She asks me to calm down, takes the young woman's phone number and calls.  No answer, she leaves a message, no response for another half hour.  I think of my convo with the man (who turned out to be her step-father) and I call him back.  The convo is quick, consisting of me explaining that I sent a picture and that I could get paperwork from the Rescue Dog Foundation, but that if I did, I was taking it to the police.  He tells me that he will call me back right away.

A few minutes later, I get a text back from the woman apologizing if I was "offended", and saying that when her boyfriend got back, they'd bring the dog home.  She reminds me that she is jut looking out for the best interests of the dog and how this is the eighth dog she has reunited with their family.  Eight!?!  That creeped me out more than I can describe.  When she brought the dog back around 6pm that night, she offered me the food she got for him, but I told her to hang on to it as she might need it again.

As I recapped later that night with my wife, I came up with the term..."not-for-profit, serial dognappers."  What an odd and harrowing day!