Horizon West family recovers dog

It was a stressful 20 hours for the Horizon West family who nearly lost their 70-pound golden doodle named Hank.

Not knowing where a beloved furry family member has gone can be scary, especially when the circumstances surrounding their disappearance start to become suspicious. 

Nate Bullock, a Windermere resident, was leading a normal day working at home before he realized his dog was missing. At first, Bullock wasn’t too concerned, but as time passed and Hank was still a no-show, he and his family grew worried.

“He had a little bit of a digging problem before, but it wasn’t anything too crazy, and he hadn’t dug anything for a year,” Bullock said.  “So, obviously, it didn’t cross my mind that he would dig under the fence and fit his fat body through the hole. 

“So I’m working in my home office, I get up to go pick up my kids and notice my dog’s not around,” he said. “I don’t initially freak out, because he’s still a puppy and the gate doesn’t latch well, so he’s gotten out a few times, but he kind of just goes to the same places to visit his little neighborhood friends. But after a while, when I hadn’t heard from anybody after putting a lost-dog notice on NextDoor, we started to get worried.”

The family began searching around the neighborhood for Hank, hoping someone had him and had not yet looked at NextDoor, hoping there was an explanation.

It wasn’t until Bullock received a call that night from a local groomer who had seen his NextDoor post that Bullock started to get suspicious. The groomer informed him that people brought Hank into his shop and had Hank completely shaved.

“I was growing his hair out so he looked really fluffy, and she said, ‘Somebody brought your dog in this afternoon and had him completely shaved down,’” Bullock said. “So that kind of freaked me out, and she added they were very suspicious about the person who brought him in, because they were acting funny and kept insisting he was a stray. But once we got him to the back, the other groomers could immediately tell he wasn’t a stray. So they were suspicious and decided to get the information of the folks who brought the dog just to contact them at a later date in case someone came in looking for the dog.”

The following morning, Bullock headed straight to the grooming salon to obtain the information of the people who had brought in his dog. He found it strange they had decided to shave him within the three hours they had had Hank — but hoped it was all just a misunderstanding. 

However, the address they’d given was fake, causing Bullock to contact the police.

“When I found that out, I called the (Orange County) Sheriff’s Office and told them the situation and asked them to send someone, because I figured something was going on,” he said. “There was a phone number on the card, too, so we called the number, but no one picked up, and I left a voicemail message.”

Twenty minutes later, the person who had Hank returned his call and complained about the vet bills. But Bullock thought it sounded suspicious and suspected he was being extorted and insisted the man simply return Hank.

Bullock finally got his dog back after meeting with the man at a nearby Starbucks. The man told Bullock he had already renamed Hank to ‘Buddy Love’ but had planned on making lost-and-found notices. In the end, Bullock was just grateful to get his dog returned to his family.

“I’m just glad we got him back, because that whole situation was very freaking weird,” Bullock said. “My big lesson from this is, you know, I did not have him chipped, but I should have taken care of that a long time ago and not procrastinated on it because this whole thing could have been avoided.”