‘Friendly-looking’ man asked dog owner if he could pet her German Shepherd — minutes later, a chilling text exposed his real intentions
Pet owners often rely on the details on dog tags, believing they’ll help their pets find their way back if lost, but one woman in North Carolina discovered that this information can sometimes fall into the wrong hands. Michelle Kimball was walking her German Shepherd, Nilla, near her home when a man approached them. He seemed friendly and asked if he could pet Nilla and take a photo, and Kimball, seeing no harm, agreed. But what happened later left her extremely shocked and scared.
As reported by iHeartToby, Kimball was shocked when, just hours later, she received a text from the "friendly" stranger trying to start a conversation. Confused, she asked how he got her number. His response left her stunned, “Oh, I got it off your dog’s collar.” It turned out he hadn’t been admiring Nilla at all; he had actually taken a picture of the dog’s tag, which showed Kimball’s phone number. "Why would anybody think that’s okay?" she asked. The situation made her feel uneasy and exposed, and she shared the experience to warn other pet owners about the risk.
Sadly, experts say this kind of incident isn’t rare. Safety specialist Barb Jordan explained that people sometimes use pets as a way to get close to others and gather private details. “We never think that people are going to be using our dogs to get close to us,” Jordan said. “But predators, they have no limits. They have no boundaries.” Her advice to pet owners is simple but important: simply follow your gut, and only include a phone number on your dog’s tag, never your address. This way, if someone truly finds your lost dog, they can still contact you, but you are not giving away too much personal information to strangers.
However, this has unfortunately become increasingly common nowadays and raises serious concerns about women's safety. In another similar incident, a woman named Shey shared her experience of a close call that could have had a very different outcome. She recalled walking her dog in the park when a man came up and asked to take a picture of the dog. Thinking nothing of it, she agreed. But while he was snapping the photo, she noticed he was holding up the dog’s collar, which had her home address printed on it. Feeling uneasy, Shey quickly told him she wasn’t comfortable with him keeping the photo and asked him to delete it.
The man deleted the photo and started to walk away, but Shey still had her doubts. She asked him to delete it from his “deleted album” as well. He claimed he didn’t have one, which raised more red flags for her. Knowing that iPhones have a recently deleted folder, she followed him through the park, asking again. As people around them began to notice what was happening, the man finally stopped. He pretended to delete it again, but when Shey asked to see the deleted album, the photo was still there. “So I made him delete it in front of my eyes,” she said. Looking back, she wondered what might have happened if she hadn’t caught him.