Glenwood Springs – The owner of a dog evacuated from New Orleans to the Western Slope last month was located on Wednesday after a massive search intended to save the animal from being put to death.
Colorado Animal Rescue Inc., the Glenwood shelter with custody of the mixed-breed named Buster, viewed the dog as a public threat after he bit its executive director during a mid-October exam at a Garfield County ranch.
Angelo Kingvalsky, who evacuated to Dallas after Hurricane Katrina, said the dog belongs to his 80-year-old mother, Lydia.
“Buster is a family dog and protected my mother,” Angelo Kingvalsky said in a phone interview. “He never bit anybody. We always considered him a friendly dog. He doesn’t deserve to die.”
After she was bitten, CARE director Leslie Rockey obtained a sheriff’s order to force the dog to the animal shelter against the wishes of his rescuer, Sue Schmidt of Silt, a dog trainer who paid to transport Buster and nine other dogs to Colorado.
CARE has maintained that Buster is dangerous and a poor candidate for adoption. Though CARE is a “no-kill” shelter, the dog’s options included euthanasia or transfer to a Utah facility for troubled animals, Rockey has said.
She declined to speak with a reporter Wednesday. CARE board members siding with Rockey also could not be reached for comment.
Buster’s case drew the sympathy of many Roaring Fork Valley residents and garnered national attention among pet rescuers and animal lovers who said shelters should make special exceptions for dogs and cats rescued from storm-ravaged areas.
Schmidt, who resigned from the CARE board as a result of the incident, said Rockey approached Buster inappropriately during an exam, placing him in a defensive position in which he felt the need to bite.
Dozens of people and even a private investigator worked to find Buster’s owner.
Kingvalsky turned up on the same day that a hearing had been scheduled to determine temporary custody of Buster and five other dogs at the CARE shelter that Schmidt had transported to Colorado. But Schmidt’s attorney went into labor and could not attend Wednesday, prompting a rescheduling to Dec. 7.
Kingvalsky, who learned of the dog’s Colorado plight through a poster placed in his mother’s neighborhood, said he will ask that Buster be placed in Schmidt’s care until he can arrange for the dog’s return.
When the family evacuated, Kingvalsky said, they assumed they would return in a couple of days and thought it was OK to leave Buster behind.
