Gypsy lives up to her name

OUR VIEW: Don’t gamble with hurricane season
June 10, 2015
Thank you Louisiana businesses of all sizes
June 10, 2015
OUR VIEW: Don’t gamble with hurricane season
June 10, 2015
Thank you Louisiana businesses of all sizes
June 10, 2015

The last time we left Susan Felio Price she was nursing her beloved Yorkshire terrier, Jazzy, back to health after a fall from the window of her Toyota 4-Runner.

The good news is that Jazzy, now nearly 2 years old, is in fine shape and apparently none the worse for the wear.

But Susan, a confirmed animal lover who lives in Chauvin, has had another recent scare concerning a beloved pet, and although this too resulted in a happy ending, it still may take Susan a while to recover fully.


This latest situation involves a yorkie who is best with Jazzy and the other pets, who was acquired from a friend and is now also nearly two years old.

Gypsy loves everybody, is affectionate to a fault and Susan is very careful with her because “she is a mountain goat.”

Susan named her Gypsy because the name went well with Jazzy’s, and the relationship has been excellent.


But Gypsy has lived up to her name, and tends to wander. For this reason Susan had a bell affixed to her collar.

On Sunday she didn’t have the belled collar, which includes identification information, because a bathing was imminent. So when Gypsy went out the door, at a moment when a family visitor stopped in, nobody noticed at first.

There came a moment, however, when the absence was noticed. Susan knocked on doors, made phone calls, and looked frantically all over Country Drive to no avail.


“I felt terror because he is so tiny, I was so afraid I would find her dead on the road,” Susan said.

She ran into a neighbor who said Gypsy had been seen, running somewhere near the Bourg Post Office. More searching occurred, with Jazzy secured under Susan’s arm, but no Gypsy was to be found.

“I thought maybe Gypsy would smell Jazzy and come to her,” Susan said.


She went to the Dollar General store near Presque Isle to buy supplies for signs. A clerk there said she had seen the dog outside the store. Some customers, she said, saw the dog too. And the clerk, who didn’t know what to do with the dog, handed her off to the customers, who left their phone number in case someone made an inquiry.

“I was ecstatic,” Susan said.

The clerk made a call to the lady about seeing if they could bring the dog back to the store. But it was too late.


The people who took the dog put a notice on Facebook, because they had a pit bull and were afraid for the tiny canine’s safety. A friend of their family came and got Gypsy, and said he would take care of her.

That’s when things started to get strange.

Once he had the dog, the fellow blocked the folks who passed her to him on Facebook, shutting down the potential for communication. Susan’s heart raced again. Gypsy, she realized, was in the hands of a dog-napper, though not a very smart one.


The man had already called the Facebook good Samaritans and left his phone number.

“I called,” said Susan, recalling that a woman answered thephone. “I got this number and I want to get my dog back.”

“She said ‘what dog?’” Susan said. “I was about to go ballistic. I was crying on the phone right there in the dollar store.”


The woman hung up on me.

“I saw red,” Susan said. She then took her cell phone and texted the number, disclosing her plans to call the police.

“They called back from a different number and said ‘we have your dog, where do you want us to bring it.’”


They showed up, the man and woman with a girl, and there was Gypsy.

“She just lunged at me, all over wanting to lick me.”

The people said nothing. Susan said “thank you.”


And today Jazzy and Gypsy are home and secure.

“From now on there will be better supervision,” said Susan. “We are careful but this happened even to us. It was a fluke. I will never take a collar off of these dogs again unless they are right there ready to get into the tub.”