Two stray dogs who caused more than $350,000 in damage to cars at a Houston dealership are now in custody — and one of them can even be adopted, officials say.
Surveillance videos caught the pernicious pooches in the act late last year. The eye-popping footage shows them charging around the G Motors lot in Harris County, Texas, jumping on cars, scratching paint and ripping car bumpers clean off with their jaws, according to ABC 13 in Houston.
That’s when Imran Haq, the dealership’s finance manager, and Gaby Fakhoury, the sales manager, called up BARC, Houston’s animal control agency, and asked for help.
“We have never seen something like this — dogs attacking cars and causing damage,” Fakhoury told the network. “But things happen. And there’s always a solution for everything.”
The pair used BARC’s cages and some cat food to trap a brown pit bull — later named Dasher — sometime around early December, the station said.
It took them a bit longer to track down his accomplice, a black dog who has yet to be named.
But they eventually nabbed him just before the turn of the new year, then handed him over to the city agency as well.
But fear not, dog lovers. The newly-imprisoned pups probably won’t be behind bars for long.
Medical staff cleared Dasher, who showed no signs of aggression towards people. Now, he’s adoptable.
His unnamed pal is safe, but still being evaluated, the network said.
The dogs raided the lot at least four times between November and December, damaging at least five cars to the tune of about $350,000, Fakhoury said.
At first, he thought a wolf might be responsible, but was shocked to find the two strays acting like extras in “Oliver & Company.”
“You just never think a dog has the kind of power to tear up a car like that,” Fakhoury told the station.
Employees think the pups may have snuck in through a hole in the fence surrounding the lot, probably while they were chasing a cat, the station said.
Their trail of destruction frightened customers and workers alike. But now they can rest easy.
“We are going to start a new year over in 2024 with no fear of dogs,” Haq said.
“(I) just want all my customers to know that everything is taken care of, and you know, we feel for these dogs, to be honest,” Fakhoury added.
“But they are in good hands, so we don’t have to worry about them right now,” he continued. “They can be adopted, or whatever the city of Houston wants to do.”