“Polly stole our hearts. Now they are broken at the hands of another. I’ve been inconsolable for two days,” says Rob.
Thursday evening Esther takes a late walk with little Polly. On the lawn in front of the Buitenzorg care center, the puppy – a cross between a Maltese, Yorkshire and a Shih Tzu – picks up something from the ground. “Let go!” Esther calls immediately. “I looked in her mouth, but I didn’t find anything there. Not even on the grass. We finished our round and went back home,” she tells the Noordhollands Dagblad.
Rob’s alarm goes off at 5 o’clock on Friday night. “We had a whole morning ritual with her,” he says. “I opened the bench as always, she jumped right out of it. She made two or three crazy jumps and then fell on her side. With stretched legs, like a fallen sheep in the meadow.”
Rob starts screaming. “‘Polly, Polly,’ I cried. Esther woke up from that. We resuscitated her, blew her nose and put her outside to cool off.” Polly seems to be doing well for a while, until she starts jerking again. “We immediately called the vet, who told us to let her eat and drink.”
‘attack after attack’
In the kitchen, Polly drinks some water. She seems to improve and Rob and Esther get a little hope. “But no, it went completely wrong. Polly had attack after attack. In the end she got stuck in an attack and…”, Esther is silent for a moment. “She was dead then.”
“I only slept an hour last night,” says Rob sadly. “I am walking around like a zombie. Polly was our baby. We were inseparable, took her everywhere.” Esther agrees with her husband: “Those convulsions, those were epileptic attacks. Later we heard from a vet that she had no pain from that. That has reassured us a lot.”
Meat pieces
A little after sunrise, Esther rushes to the lawn on Friday morning where Polly picked up something from the ground the night before. “There I found two rolls of meat with pieces of wire in them. There’s no way someone put it there on purpose. I took it home and immediately called the police. They came to pick it up later in the day.”
A few hours later, neighbor Peter from a few houses away unsuspectingly walks the same round with his nine-year-old Finnish Lapphund Nooa. “He ate something off the sidewalk. It looked like a piece of shit. Well, you know how dogs are,” he laughs.
Peter goes out with his best friend Daphne. “My son called that Nooa was upstairs convulsing. My wife Angelique gave him a heart massage. Daphne and I went home with screaming tires and then to the vet with screaming tires. He asked, “Do you have a moment?” Our answer was loud and clear: ‘No’.”
Parenthesis
The vet gives Nooa food with cotton wool and an emetic. Daphne: “On the X-ray you clearly saw a hook hanging at the top of his stomach. Nooa has vomited all of his stomach contents. Fortunately, the cotton wool protected his esophagus, because the iron wire hook also came out.”
Peter and Daphne are anxious all afternoon at the vet on Friday. “There was still poison in his body, so Nooa had a few more attacks after vomiting,” says Daphne. It was a nerve-wracking few hours, especially for Peter.
“I was so afraid he was going to die. If the poison doesn’t work, the hook will. Incomprehensible, it is normally such a dog-friendly neighborhood. This is a dog hater anyway, someone who is sick in the head.”
That thought moves the friends to tears. “No Peter without Nooa,” says Daphne, wiping her cheek dry. “Nooa helped me through a severe depression,” says Peter. “My wife was in intensive care for seventeen days last year with a flesh-eating bacteria in her bloodstream. Nooa got me through that time.”
Wag
Slowly but surely, Nooa gets his pranks back on Friday towards evening. “It really is a smiley face. Everyone’s friend, always cheerful. If he doesn’t wag his tail, something is wrong. It was a great relief to see him smiling again,” says Daphne. “Saturday afternoon we also received positive results of blood tests. Fortunately, we can now say that Nooa is a healthy dog.”
The police say that between February 25 and March 3, a total of three reports were received about dogs showing symptoms of poisoning. “Samples of the meat have been seized for examination. The vet has shared his suspicion of poisoning with us,” says the spokesperson.
The body of the deceased puppy Polly has also been taken to a forensic institute for examination. “I had already buried her in the garden,” says Rob. “She smelled very strange after an hour,” says Esther. “The researcher knew immediately that there was poison because of her smell and because the rolls of meat had turned completely lilac.”
Sadness
Rob and Esther are now waiting for the outcome of the investigation. “The police keep us informed,” says Rob. “I’m not going to get over this for a while. With Esther, the blow will probably come later, she is now mainly in control mode.”
Report „Polly was such a lovely animal. Our other dog Floyd and two cats also miss Polly, they were really four legs on one belly. That bastard gets a huge thank you. On Facebook there are people who can lynch the perpetrator, or offer 100 euros for tracking down. I hope that the perpetrator reports himself, but above all I hope that I do not have to encounter him.”
The police call on all dog and cat owners to keep an eye on their animals and advise a quick trip to the vet if poisoning is suspected. “If people know who is responsible for this, witnesses or otherwise, we would like to speak to them,” says the spokesperson.