WEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - A missing dog was seen on camera in the arms of a stranger.
“This dog has been with me for my ups and my downs, and he’s part of me, I always call him my spirit animal,” said Kathryn Perez, the dog’s owner.
But right now he’s missing, and the only person who can bring him home is the woman in this surveillance video.
“We really miss him, we really miss him,” Perez said.
Perez said her 10-and-a-half-year-old Shih Tzu, Yoshi, was last seen at her home in the area of Southwest 168th Street and 142nd Avenue in Southwest Miami-Dade on Jan. 27
“I was working from here, opened the door to get some fresh air in the house,” she said.
That day, Yoshi went out into the fenced-in side yard. Minutes later, he was gone.
Perez believes he may have slipped under the fence.
“I went out, I looked for him, scoured the neighborhood,” Perez said. “Putting flyers in the mailboxes, posting it up on the trees.”
A week and a half later, she got a call that her micro-chipped dog had been scanned at a vet clinic in a shopping plaza along Southwest Eighth Street, near 147th Avenue.
Surveillance video showed a woman going into the clinic with Yoshi in her arms.
“To me, he looks really confused because he’s like who is this lady?” Perez said.
Perez said that after her dog was scanned, that woman was told the dog has an owner.
That’s when she left a slip of paper with her name and contact information.
“Come to find out all the phone numbers and the address, including her name, was all false, fake, non-existent,” Perez said.
Perez said her family isn’t complete without Yoshi, and she needs the public’s help to bring him home.
“Just please, if you know this person or if you recognize my dog, just call me,” she said. “I just want him home. I want him home.”
Perez said that she was told that the woman was seen driving a green SUV, older model with chipped paint, and the woman also had a handicapped parking tag in her vehicle.
Yoshi has to eat special food because he’s on medication for kidney problems, and he’s been taken from the only family he’s ever known.
If you recognize the woman in the video, you can reach out to Kathryn by calling the number on the flyer.
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