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SEATTLE
— Two black labs didn't make it home for Christmas
this year.
The two
pooches swapped homes after a mix-up at an Eastside
Seattle dog hotel led them to be released to the wrong
owners this month.
Bella,
who belongs to
Stacey and Rob Peterson
, of
Maple Valley, Wash.
, ended up spending a few weeks in
Issaquah, Wash.
, with
Anne Galasso
.
Galasso's
dog, LaiLa, spent time in
Canada
near Stacey Peterson's parents, and then in
Maple Valley
when the Petersons returned from a vacation in
Europe
.
PetSmart
PetsHotel of
Issaquah
, where both dogs were boarded, is working to make
amends, in part by refunding both families' boarding
fees.
Both
families knew something was amiss, but never dreamed
they had ended up with the wrong dogs.
To the
Petersons, the clues included the fact that the dog they
thought was Bella looked skinnier when they got home,
barked a lot more and didn't respond to her name the
same way.
But they
wondered whether she was just upset because they'd been
gone.
Galasso
chalked up behavior differences — including much more
licking than usual — to the fact that she'd just moved
to a new home, away from dogs that LaiLa used to play
with.
It was
Christmas Day
when the Petersons, still puzzling over the changes in
their dog, realized she wasn't really Bella.
Stacey Peterson
joked that perhaps Bella had changed so much that she
didn't have a gap between two of her teeth anymore.
When they
looked, she didn't.
"Clearly
this dog had all her teeth," Peterson said.
"And that's when things started to make
sense."
Peterson
called
PetSmart
, and took her dog to a nearby veterinary hospital that
scanned her microchip. The truth was revealed: The dog
was really LaiLa.
The
hospital called Galasso. She was shocked because,
despite the differences, the two dogs also are very
similar, she said.
LaiLa,
she said, has a bone protruding from the top of her
head, and so does Bella.
And
Bella, she said, slept at the bottom of her bed with her
cats just like LaiLa did.
The two
dogs were reunited with their real owners the day after
Christmas.
Both
owners say they will be much more careful in the future
in boarding their dogs, and Peterson's not sure she will
ever board her dog again.
Both are
glad that nothing bad happened.
"I
had exposed Bella to the disabled population because I
work with developmentally disabled adults," Galasso
said. She said Bella also was exposed to her cats and to
horses.
"If
her (Peterson's) dog wasn't as good as she is, it could
have been a disaster," she said.
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