Losing a family pet can be traumatic event, but Cassandra O’Rourke says for her, it has been 10 times worse because of how her dog died.
Lee County Domestic Animal Service put her beloved pit-bull, Coal, down in late June because of a problem with the animal’s microchip.
O’Rourke said “I’ve been crying every single day,”
The problem started when animal services tried to find the owner based on the information on Coal’s microchip, but received no response.
“According to records, we tried to reach to the person of record,” said Lee County Domestic Animal Services spokesperson Ria Brown.
Turns out the information on Coal microchip belonged to someone else due to an error on the part of Lighthouse Pet Clinic that put in the device.
The doctor at the Pet Clinic said by phone that someone in his office made an error resulting in him putting information on the microchip that belonged to another woman from Cape Coral.
“I don’t understand how they could have entered in the wrong information,” said O’Rourke.
She is upset that animal services did not catch the mistake in the first place.
“When she came in. she didn’t give us any microchip information. There was nothing for us to link again that dog to her during the time period it was here,” said Brown.
O’Rourke insists animal service could have just adopted out the dog instead of euthanizing it, but Brown says that was not possible because Coal had ringworms and other issues.
Meantime, O’Rourke is still looking for answers and justice for her beloved pet.