RSPCA Tasmania has rejected claims it knowingly rehomed a stolen dog.
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The organisation came under fire after a devastated mum accused its Launceston shelter of adopting out her purebred Rottweiler, which had been taken from a friends backyard last month.
Krystal Burns contacted the RSPCA the day after two-year-old Sasha went missing on March 29.
This week, she took to social media in anger, claiming Sasha had ended up at the shelter but had been adopted by a new family.
Ms Burns said she was never contacted by the organisation to say a female Rottweiler had been brought in.
“I'm completely heartbroken for my kids and myself, part of my family is missing, our fur baby” she said.
“All we want is our dog home with us.”
The dog that was brought into the shelter, however, was not registered or microchipped and was found by the council about 30 kilometres from where Sasha was last seen.
RSPCA Tasmania chief executive Peter West acknowledged the situation was unfortunate, but he said there was still no proof the dog in question was Sasha.
“We don’t want this kind of thing to happen, it’s not an outcome that makes us happy at all, but there is a shared responsibility,” he said.
“A person did report a lost dog, but we did not put two and two together for many reasons.”
Mr West said the RSPCA did not have any photos of Sasha, several weeks had passed and they had not been contacted again in relation to a lost Rottweiler.
“We are not blaming anyone, but if there was ever a case to encourage micro-chipping, it is this one,” Mr West said.
RSPCA Tasmania has since met with both Ms Burns and the adopting family.
“I absolutely feel for these people, any human would … but at the end of the day the RSPCA followed all due process in this situation,” Mr West said.
Ms Burns said she would push for a DNA test to prove Sasha’s identity and “get her home where she belongs”.