UPDATE Woman Charged With Animal Cruelty For Mailing Live Puppy

The postal worker was stunned when the package moved by itself and fell to the floor. Then came the sounds of heavy panting.

Within minutes, she and co-workers had unwrapped a tightly sealed box and rescued a 4-month-old puppy that a Minneapolis woman tried to mail to Georgia.

"It's just crazy," said Minneapolis Police Sgt. Angela Dodge. The air holes the woman punched in the box were covered up with mailing tape, and the priority mail trip would have taken at least two days, she said. "It was supposed to be a birthday gift for a family member. It would have been kind of traumatizing to get a dead puppy,'' Dodge said. "If you don't identify it so that it can be handled properly, it goes into the cargo hold of an airplane. It gets 40 below in those cargo planes that get up 40,000 feet. And there was no food or water. Puppies can't go for long periods without food or water."

The dog would have been dead on delivery, agreed police spokesman Sgt. William Palmer. "I've been doing this for 17 years. This is a new one on me."

The woman, Stacey Champion, declined to tell police why she decided to mail the puppy, Dodge said.

Champion paid $22 to send the black poodle-Schnauzer mix puppy named Guess to Georgia via priority mail, said Thompson Ojoyeyi, supervisor at the Loring Station post office. The worker who accepted the package asked all the standard questions: Any perishables, liquids, hazardous materials?

Champion said no, but then she cautioned postal workers to "be careful, be careful" as they handled the box because "it was so delicate," Ojoyeyi said.

On the outside of the package Champion wrote "This is for your 11th birthday. It's what you wanted," he said. She also told the clerk that if sounds came from the package, not to worry, it just contained a toy robot, Ojoyeyi added.

When the box began moving and making noise, workers called a postal inspector -- the Postal Service's enforcement arm -- and got permission to open the package, Ojoyeyi said.

Guess "was so happy to get out," Ojoyeyi said. "We gave him water and he drank so fast."

"How could someone do this kind of thing?" he said. "For us, it was very unusual."

The Postal Service will ship some live animals such as bees, certain small and harmless cold-blooded animals, chicks and ducklings. But sending dogs and cats through the mail is a definite no, he said.

Champion was cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty and has 10 days to appeal. The dog is now at the city's animal control facility. If Champion declines or loses her appeal, Guess would go up for adoption. So far, Champion hasn't notified authorities that she wants the dog back, Dodge said.

She did, however, return to the post office to demand a refund for the $22 she paid to mail the puppy. She also wanted a small amount of money she had attached to a makeshift dog collar returned to her.

Postal workers nixed the refund and told her to contact law enforcement about the collar currency. "We asked her, don't you want to know about your puppy? But she said no. She just wanted her money back," Ojoyeyi said. "It's just weird to mail an animal like that in a package all covered up. We don't know what she was thinking about."

http://www.startribune.com/local/115011544.html


update

The Minneapolis woman who tried to mail a puppy wants him back.

"I'm just appalled," said Mitzi Carroll, who learned about the puppy's plight from a TV broadcast in Georgia, where she lives. "And now she wants it back? Really? I have a strong problem with that. How do you put a puppy in a box and try to mail it? That's just animal cruelty."

That's exactly what Minneapolis authorities thought. They charged Stacey Champion, 39, with animal cruelty and impounded Guess, a 4-month-old poodle-Schnauzer mix that postal officials said likely would have been DOA at its Georgia destination.

As word of the pup's discovery in a sealed box with no air holes spread across the country, concerned animal lovers began calling and e-mailing city officials with requests to adopt the black dog.

But Carroll, who already has adopted two dogs and three cats, and other would-be rescuers will have to wait for the outcome of an administrative hearing Monday, at which Champion is scheduled to plead for the dog's return.

That request itself is a bit unusual. "In the four years that I've been here, we never had a person appeal after an animal was impounded because of animal cruelty," said Dan Niziolek, manager for Minneapolis' Animal Care and Control. Of course, city officials can't remember ever handling a case in which someone tried to send a puppy through the mail, either.

In appealing the case, Champion had to pay about $250 in fees for the city to kennel and care for the puppy. If she loses her case before the administrative hearing officer, the puppy would be put up for adoption or she could take her case to the Court of Appeals, Niziolek said. But Champion would have to pay the city $15 a day for the puppy's care until her case was resolved.

The hearing is set for 11 a.m. Monday at City Hall, Room 314, said city spokesman Matt Laible.

Champion also needs to resolve the criminal case for animal cruelty in Hennepin County District Court. Even if she wins the puppy back during her appeal, a judge could restrict her ownership of animals, Niziolek said.

Champion didn't return calls asking about her plans for Monday's hearing.

"I would like to be at that hearing. I really would," said Sally Shortridge, who is outraged over the idea that an adult woman who put a puppy in the mail might regain custody.

"I have nieces and nephews at 12 and 14 who would know much better," she said. "She shouldn't get that poor little puppy back."