Last month, Brayden Morton of British Columbia was working from home when he saw that someone had taken his three-year-old Chinese Shar-Pei, Darla, from his backyard and sped off in a truck. “I immediately started running after them,” Morton told The Washington Post. “They were gone. I couldn’t believe what had just happened.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police posted a news release the same day asking for help in searching for Darla, but Morton wasn’t about sitting around and waiting. “It honestly felt like my world had just come crashing down on me,” he explained.
Morton then did what almost anybody with a missing pet would do: he turned to social media for help. “Please share and help me. A blue older model Ford truck just pulled up behind my house and took Darla,” he wrote in Facebook post that offered a $5,000 reward.
The responses came quickly. “I had something like 497 messages,” he said. “I was getting leads from all across the world. It was crazy.”
After chasing down a dead end lead, Morton received a call from a woman crying on the other end. He knew, at that moment, that she was the thief. “She couldn’t even talk,” Morton explained. “I said to her, ‘Listen, I’ve messed up a lot in my life, and I’ve been forgiven for a lot of things I did. I’m not mad at you.’”
‘I Went And Gave Her A Hug, And I Said, ‘It’s All Right”
So with an offer of $6,000 and a plan to meet at a nearby gas station, Morton and the unnamed 20-year-old woman met up. She had Darla on a leash. “It was one of the most overwhelming feelings I’ve ever felt. I was elated,” Morton said.
Once he reunited with Darla, Morton recognized himself in the woman standing before him. “I could tell that she was a fentanyl addict, like me,” Morton, a recovering addict since 2015, explained. He went through similar struggles with his addiction. “I was in out and of treatment 16 times. I was the hopeless addict who was never supposed to get better.”
That shared experience and empathy with a woman whom he had never met made it easy for him to decide on what to do next. “She is just a kid, and she was standing there bawling. I went and gave her a hug, and I said, ‘It’s all right,’” Morton said.
Morton shared his story with the woman, and she revealed that her addiction had left her unhoused and performing sex work to obtain fentanyl. She had initially planned to sell Darla online, but in the end, “she couldn’t live with herself” as a dog lover.
After speaking with the woman for over an hour, Morton revealed his plan to help. He offered to pay for her rehab with the reward money instead of calling the authorities.
“I know if I give you this money, I’m going to hear about you dead in the next day or two,” he told her. “I’m going to take this money, and I’m going use it to pay for you to go to treatment. I’m going to give you the opportunity to help yourself,” he told her.
‘We Need To Advocate For Each Other’
(Picture Credit: Aleksandr Zotov/Getty Images)The woman accepted and checked into the Westminster House Society, with $6,000 covered of the $22,000, 90-day program. “Brayden is going to support her while we get her funding in place,” the center’s executive director, Susan Hogarth, said. “We will do whatever we can to get her well.”
Hogarth praised Morton for realizing that he had an opportunity to help someone who experienced the same fear he did. “His heart is truly in it,” she explained. “In this whole situation that happened with him and his beloved pet Darla, a normal person would be angry, but his anger just melted off of him as soon as he noted that this girl was so sick.”
For Morton, he hopes the woman can pass on his gift to someone else in need. “One day, I hope she looks back on this story and it motivates her to help somebody else,” he said. “We need to advocate for each other.”
We at DogTime encourage all dog parents to tag, license, and microchip their pets for instances like this. Many more lost pets return to their families quickly when they have proper identification.
What would you do if someone took your dog from you, then came forward to return your pet? Would you feel angry or try to show compassion and help like Morton did? Please let us know in the comments below.
