A UPS delivery driver in Vancouver realized he was transporting a rather cute, but unauthorized package Thursday night.
The discovery was made a short time after South Vancouver resident Valerie Havlesak let her two dogs out.
“I let them out in the yard and a few minutes later Sammy came back but no Bella. So I went outside and discovered the front gate had been left open,” she told CKNW’s The Jill Bennett Show.
Havlesak said Bella, a Maltese, often goes to the neighbour’s yard so she checked there first.
“But this time she was nowhere to be found,” she said.
The Havlesak family scoured the area, and seeing no sign of Bella, started to worry.
“We came back in, made a report to the city of a missing dog and then printed out posters and went back out and started putting posters all over the neighborhood.”
Valerie’s husband Mark even fired up the BBQ hoping the smell of grilling chicken would lure the little dog home.
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But Bella was out of smell range having hitched a ride in a UPS truck, unbeknownst to the driver — who after discovering her had no idea where she came from, so no idea where to take her back.
Havelsak says the driver eventually saw a Vancouver police traffic officer, and handed Bella over.
That officer was Sgt. Mark Christensen.
“Then we got a call that Sgt. Christensen had found the dog and he reported the found dog to the city,” Havlesak said.
“They connected the dots and called us and we went and picked her up.”
At that point, it was still unclear how Bella ended up blocks away and with the officer. A phone call from Sgt. Christensen filled in the blanks.
“A UPS driver waved him down and told him, ‘I found a dog in my truck!’ and just handed her over,” she said.
Havlesak says Bella is very friendly and has a history of happily jumping into the cars of strangers.
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“This is totally in Bella’s character. She will hop in anyone’s car. She went for a joyride.”
It turns out, Bella is also very lovable.
“We chatted and he told me that they bonded and he’d put his name down and he was kind of hoping that no one claimed her because he wanted to adopt her,” she said.
Bella wasn’t wearing her tags when she was let out into the yard Thursday. Havelsak says that is not going to happen again.
As for how things might have turned out if the UPS driver hadn’t seen Sgt. Christensen?
“It ended up okay but it could have gone another way. Who knows where she could have ended up? Sgt. Christensen was a hero.”
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