Imagine then your heartbreak when, having been admitted to hospital suddenly, your dog escapes and is impounded. You are so traumatised you check yourself out of hospital to retrieve your pet and go to the pound, to be told it’s $186 to get it released. Short of the cash, unable to negotiate a time payment, you’re forced to go to a pawnbroker to put your wedding rings into hock to raise the cash.

This is Maryanne Yuritta’s story. Having recently moved to Ballarat from Mount Egerton, Maryanne was accompanied by her seven-year-old dog Ruby, her “inseparable friend”. 

“This little kid never leaves my side, I mean she comes to work with me, she sits in the car with windows open, at the peril of it being stolen, with her bowl and her food… she goes with me, everywhere,” says Maryanne.

Ruby is microchipped. However, she could not be registered as Ballarat City Council required proof of desexing. Maryanne says she was getting the required paperwork for the council when she was taken ill and rushed to hospital.

Inside the empty house and without a collar on, Ruby was accidentally let out, and was found and impounded by council officers in the front yard of her property, as Maryanne has trained her to wait at the front door of her home.

“They rang me up at quarter-to-four on the Friday night and said, ‘Do you have a dog called Ruby? She’s down here at the pound.’

“They made me leave her in there over the weekend. I don’t know anybody in Ballarat, I’ve never been without her… we’ve gone hiking, she’s been through rivers with me, surfing… She spent four days in there.

“I had $130 in my wallet. I was short of what they wanted (to release her). The hospital discharged me, I shouldn’t have left, but there was no other way of doing it. I’ve got two gold rings; I’ve hocked them to make up the money to pick her up.”

Maryanne, still with her hospital bands on and bruised from treatment, went to the pound in Gillies Street to retrieve Ruby. She says she was called a ‘bad owner’ by staff, and the RSPCA threatened to rehome Ruby by the Thursday before Easter if Maryanne hadn't collected her by then.

Still unwell, Maryanne is concerned that the process of dog retrieval is so inflexible. She says dogs mean the world to their owners, and could empathise with how someone much older would feel if this happened to them. 

The RSPCA has been contacted for comment.