Worried, Bounds searched her Toppenish neighborhood to no avail. She even posted on Facebook that her dog was missing. On Sunday, Sox was found dead with his legs hog-tied about 5 miles west of the city on Ashue Road.
Bounds can’t understand why anyone would take Sox, and leave him the way he was found.
“It’s been a rough couple of days,” Bounds said by phone Tuesday. “Sox was an amazing dog. He never hurt anybody. He was playful, he was gentle and my kids loved him. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, and that’s why this is so devastating to us. He wasn’t a stray running and growling at people in town. He was a very gentle old man.”
Facebook posts about Sox prompted several more posts from others who said they, too, had found dead dogs similarly bound in areas around Branch Road in the Lower Valley.
Authorities say the incident involving Sox is the only report they’ve received about a dog found dead and bound, and that there is little to investigate, said Yakima County Sheriff’s Office Chief Criminal Deputy John Durand.
“At this point, we don’t have enough to go on,” he said.
Nicole Papageorgiou, outreach and education manager for the Yakima Humane Society, said her office has not received another report like this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring.
“I hope it’s not a rash,” she said. “My heart breaks for the people who are the owners of this dog. To find their pet that way must be terrible.”
Sox was found by Tenya Moravec and her husband, Gary, who live in the area. They were driving when they spotted a dog laying on the side of the road and thought it might have been hit by a car.
But closer examination revealed an alarming picture, Tenya Moravec said. All four of the dog’s legs were hog-tied, and it looked as if it was tossed out along with nearby bags of trash.
“We didn’t notice any external injuries,” she said. “He just looked like he’d been tied up and thrown out with the trash. I don’t know how he died.”
The dog was wearing a collar but no tags, she said. Angered by how the dog was left, the couple called the sheriff’s office, recorded video of the scene and posted it on Facebook. And that’s when they learned about Bound’s post saying Sox was missing. Gary Moravec immediately contacted Bounds, and her stepfather came to the scene and identified Sox.
“He was kind of in a daze, and I understood,” Gary Moravec said. “It was devastating.”
Bounds had her stepfather bury Sox on his country property outside Toppenish.
Bounds said Sox has been part of her family since before her children, 8 and 12, were born.
“They grew up with him. They crawled all over him and he just took it — he was an amazing dog,” she said. “The thing I kept on saying, ‘He lived such a good life.’ We were so good to him and to have him have to go out of this world in such fear, that’s what breaks my heart.
“My whole family misses him. In those years we’ve never experienced something so devastating in our family before, He was a family member.”
(Yakima Herald - March 25, 2016)
Horrible that someone would do this to any animal. Perhaps keeping your dog on your own property and not letting it roam would keep it safe. Just sayin'.
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