Texas mayor dogged by puppy theft charges

My brother sent me this story – he lives in Alice, TX.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Alice (I spent a week there one day!).  It is a small and fairly impoverished town in the middle of nowhere.  My parents lived near there for years.

Not much happens in Alice, TX that makes the national news. But when the Mayor claims the dog she was sitting died, yet really steals it and later claims she is just protecting it, then things tend to get a wider view.

You have to love small town politics, and small town mayors.  Give someone just a bit of power and they suddenly think they can lie, and steal, and cheat.

Follow the link for the rest of the story.

ALICE, TEXAS — Politicians have been known to pull some doggone dirty tricks, but can it get more low-down than puppy theft?

That’s the question people in this Texas brush country town are asking now that their mayor has admitted — without a smidgen of remorse — that for months she’s been harboring Puddles, her neighbors’ cuddly Shih Tzu.

First owners First owners click to enlarge At first, Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez lied to the family, telling its members that the dog had died while they were vacationing. Now she’s refusing to return the pooch, which she calls Panchito.

She argues that the dog’s owners have forsaken the right to keep such a tender animal because they failed to shower him with loving care when he was ill and needed them most. That’s triggered a bizarre custody battle that has both sides howling for sympathy.

“I’ll tell you what: Let’s drop that dog in the middle of the courtroom and see who it goes to first,” the mayor’s attorney, Homero Canales, barked in a fit of bravado. “You want a dog? Take care of it. These people were more interested in going on vacation than caring for a dog that looked like it was about to die.”

The Puddles-Panchito feud started last summer, when Rudy Gutierrez and Shelly Cavazos asked Saenz-Lopez to dog-sit their sickly black-and-white pup while they took their four children to an amusement park. Puddles had gotten trapped under their home weeks earlier, and by the time he emerged, he had been ravaged by fleas. He was deathly ill when the family decided to go away, Gutierrez and Cavazos admit.

After one day, the mayor called them with terrible news: Puddles was dead.

Texas mayor dogged by puppy theft charges – Los Angeles Times