A two-year-old black shepherd mix with one blue eye and one brown eye is safe, but the man who found him and brought him to a Weld County animal shelter has disappeared — and so far, the information he gave shelter staff has led nowhere. The Weld County Sheriff's Office is now asking the public for help identifying him, describing him only as a man associated with a dark-colored Jeep.
A Good Deed That Left More Questions Than Answers
According to the Weld County Sheriff's Office, the man reportedly took the dog he found to a local animal shelter, where staff scanned the animal for a microchip. The dog, described as a two-year-old black shepherd mix with a white spot on his chest, did not have one. Because there was no microchip to trace, the shelter allowed the man to file a found report and take the dog back home with him rather than surrender it on the spot, per the sheriff's office post.
That decision became a problem days later. The dog's owner contacted the shelter on October 17 after spotting the animal listed on its lost-and-found page, hoping for a straightforward reunion. Instead, the owner and animal control officers discovered they could not locate or contact the man using the information he had provided when he filed the report, the sheriff's office said.
Deputies Turn to the Public for Leads
With the trail gone cold, the sheriff's office published its appeal Wednesday, titled “Attempt to Identify-Theft,” asking anyone who recognizes the man or his dark-colored Jeep to come forward. Officials asked tipsters to call dispatch at (970) 356-4015, select option 1, and ask for animal control, noting that dispatch handles those calls between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Weld County's animal control program otherwise maintains broader coverage than that call window suggests. According to the Weld County Sheriff's Office Animal Control Unit, its officers are available seven days a week, including all major holidays, though the unit deals only with calls in the unincorporated parts of the county.
How Weld County Handles Lost and Found Animals
If a dog arrives wearing a collar and tags, or carrying a microchip, the unit says every possible effort will be made to contact the owner — a safeguard that was not available in this case because the shepherd mix had no chip.
It remains unclear why the man who found the dog did not simply hand the animal over to the shelter outright, or why the contact information he supplied did not check out. The sheriff's office has not said whether any additional details about the man or his Jeep have surfaced since the appeal was posted. For now, the dog's owner is left waiting, and deputies are relying on the public to fill in the gaps left by an address and phone number that apparently led nowhere.
