On one June morning a little over a decade later, the Lakavage family woke up to find that their dog, a dalmatian named Pepper, was missing. Mrs. Lavakage hunted and advertised for her dog throughout the following week, posting signs around the town and enlisting the help of her family and the locals to mobilize a search. Shortly after, she spoke with someone who had seen a man “loading a dalmatian into the back of a truck near [the Lavakage’s] farm (Engber, 2009).
Unknown to the Lavakages, dogcatcher Jack Clark had already given Pepper to his friend Bill Miller for transport. Rumored to have been dropped off by Miller at the farm of an ex-cop in upstate New York, the Lavakage family quickly sought the help of law enforcement to retrieve Pepper. With no hard evidence or a warrant, the police were unable to search the farm, leaving the Lavakages empty handed (Engber, 2009).…show more content… After learning that the Lavakages were denied entry into the farm that was rumored to be harboring Pepper, she relayed the story to her friend Christine Stevens, chief lobbyist and founder of the Animal Welfare Institute (Engber, 2009). A connection of Stevens’, business executive and Congressman Joseph Resnick, called the ex-cop and requested that Julia be allowed to check the farm for her dog (Engber, 2009). It was later discovered that Miller never delivered Pepper to the farm; instead, he sold her to a Manhattan hospital. She died during a failed cardiac pacemaker experiment and was cremated shortly after (Engber,
