Husky News

Joe Ryan’s lost dog came home. Two weeks ago, Ryan’s dog statue disappeared from his front porch on Manor Boulevard.

But last week, Ryan came home from work and found the statue right back in its usual spot.

“That just amazed me,” Ryan said.

But the dog didn’t return on it’s own, since it’s made of concrete and not quite as speedy as it was in a previous life.

The concrete statue contains the ashes of Ryan’s Alaskan malamute that died just before they poured the statue about 10 years ago. (Stolen Statue May Come Back to Bite, Dec. 6, 2007) So Ryan suspected the statue might be bad luck for whoever stole it.

The mystery of how the dog statue returned to Ryan’s porch was solved when he got a telephone call later that day from Det. Brian Anthony of the San Leandro police.

Anthony and another detective, Dan Fernandez, were having lunch at The Englander when Anthony read the story about the missing statue.

“We saw a statue like that three days earlier when we were searching a trailer in San Lorenzo,” Anthony said.

The detectives went back to the trailer but the statue was gone, so they made a deal with the guy who lived there, who had been in jail for one day when they searched his residence.

“I gave him a deal that I wouldn’t arrest him right then if he told me where the statue was,” Anthony said.

Anthony sent the report to the district attorney, so it’s up to the DA whether the guy will be prosecuted for the stolen statue.

Anthony said the guy who had the statue had seen the story in the newspaper and freaked out. He took it up to his brother’s on Benedict Drive.

“The brother was a nice guy and he let us take the statue,” Anthony said.

Then Anthony delivered the statue to Ryan’s house on Manor, set it on the porch where he thought it might go, and left his card.

“The statue was right back in its usual spot,” Ryan said.

Source: EastBay