Robert Gabbert recently found out that his ex-girlfriend sold his dog Baxter on Craigslist while he was deployed to Afghanistan. Now, after a public campaign put pressure on the buyers, the soldier from Fort Carson, Colorado, is going to get his dog back.
“I am currently deployed, and my ex sold my dog. I just found out, and I am trying to find the people (person) who bought him,” Mr. Gabbert wrote on Craigslist when he found out about his dog. “I will pay anything to get him back. His name is Baxter, and he is an Shiba Inu. I do not have my phone with me. You can email me. The phone number is my mom’s; she is helping me locate him. If you have any information PLEASE give us a call or an email.”
The family who bought the dog initially said that their children, which had a total of one week’s worth of contact with the dog, were attached to the animal. After a Facebook page was launched in support of the soldier and local media took up his cause, the parents relented.
“They keep saying they have children that are attached,” Mr. Gabbert’s mother, Karen, told a local NBC affiliate before an agreement was reached with the buyers. “Well my child is attached to the dog. Just because he’s older doesn’t mean he’s not my child.”
“I think the people that bought the dog and read the stories and felt bad,” Mr. Gabbert’s father, Robert Sr., told The Daily Mail Wednesday.
During Mr. Gabbert’s deployment, his then-girlfriend said she was having trouble caring for the dog. The soldier gave the woman his father’s cell phone number, but she never used it.
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“She never did call me,’ ” Mr. Gabbert told the Daily Mail. “[The] next thing we hear, she’d gone and sold him on the Internet!”
The Colorado Shiba Inu Rescue has offered to help the family who purchased Baxter on Craigslist find a new dog, the local station reported.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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