I was running late on a hectic morning, driving down County Road 12, when something caught my eye—a small group of four boxer puppies huddled near a ditch, shivering and covered in mud. They looked lost and frightened, with no sign of a mother or nearby home. A half-collapsed box lay beside them, hinting they’d been left there. Though I was in a rush for an important meeting, I couldn’t bring myself to drive past.
I pulled over, wrapped the puppies in an old hoodie I had in the car, and brought them home. After giving them a warm bath and drying them off with towels, I planned to check for microchips and post them in a local lost pet group. That’s when I noticed something strange—one of the puppies wore a yellow collar with a handwritten tag tucked underneath. It read simply: “Not Yours.”
That phrase unsettled me, and when I showed the tag to my friend Tate, a vet tech, his expression turned serious. He said he’d seen something like it before and advised caution. “These pups might not be as lost as you think,” he warned. His tone hinted at something darker, and I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.
Later, Tate scanned the puppies. Only one—the one with the yellow collar—had a microchip, traced back to a vet clinic several counties away. Oddly, the clinic had no current records and said the chip hadn’t been registered in years. It didn’t make sense—these puppies couldn’t be older than eight weeks. When I pressed Tate, he cautiously explained that certain signs could point to unethical or illegal breeding practices. Though he didn’t elaborate, I began to worry for the safety of these puppies.
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