Sadie the black working labrador was a valued member of the Duff family.
“The kid just loved her,” owner Andrew Duff said.
“She was a really good dog, so everywhere you go people would say how beautiful she was. She had this great temperament. She was impressive.”
What happened on Saturday, July 8 “you can’t fathom”, Andrew said.
It was mid morning. The whole family was at home, on Coombs Rd just south of Mangalore.
Andrew was giving his other dog a bath. His children were playing. Andrew asked his wife where Sadie was.
“I went outside. I could see a ute parked on the GV Freeway. I didn’t even contemplate that anything was happening there,” Andrew said.
He called out and whistled to Sadie, who usually would respond without fail.
She didn’t return and Andrew assumed she was in a paddock.
He went to get the car keys to find Sadie.
The Toyota LandCruiser with a flat tray that was parked at his property’s gates sped off. There was a black dog on the back.
“I just thought it was someone pulled over on the phone or something,” Andrew said.
Andrew noticed that there were dog boxes on the tray of the ute, but the dog was tied to the outside of the boxes.
He watched the car drive away. He didn’t know that it was his dog, Sadie, on the back.
Andrew drove into Seymour and upon return he and his wife were met with every dog owner’s fear.
They found Sadie’s body a few kilometres up the road.
“She hadn’t been run over, she had a head injury,” Andrew said. He had confirmed this with the vets.
“Her collar was 50, 60 metres up the road, it was broken. And there was a lamb’s leg ... There is no lambing going on near us, we checked with the neighbours who own lambs.
“How she died? We guessed she fell off the ute, but we don’t really know.
“When I was yelling out they must have had her at that point because she didn’t come back and they’ve just taken off.”
The ute was driving along the Goulburn Valley Freeway between Seymour and Shepparton.
The Duffs’ house is remote, without another home for about a kilometre each side of the property. There is not a lot of foot traffic.
“There was footsteps in the mud like they had come over to get her,” Andrew said.
“You like to think people have good intentions but in this occasion obviously not.”
Mr Duff contacted the police and they logged the incident on a database.
The incident is strikingly similar to one that occurred in Bendigo in July.
Two Jack Russells were taken from their home by a driver of a white ute. They were found dead along the side of Wimmera Hwy just 6km away the next day.
The Duff family are still grappling with the loss of a valued member of their clan.
“It does you no good because you start looking and there is a lot of vehicles like that,” Andrew said.
“It’s just upsetting because there is that mystery element but there’s also that feeling that someone had the wrong intentions.
“All dogs are special, but Labradors especially are irreplaceable. They become a part of the family.”