Before the lawsuits and threats, before he was hit by a car and returned from the dead, before she went into hiding, before word spread across the country and the searches began, before it got ugly, there was a post on Craigslist about a dog named Henry.
***
There it was among posts for lost car keys and a bike:
HELP FIND HENRY!!
The 807-word post appeared on the Bloomington Craigslist page Sept. 4.
In it, Jennifer Peavler Bradley made a plea for her missing Great Pyrenees.
Jennifer wrote that she left the dog in the care of a woman named Shonna Flynn, but Shonna refused to give him back. Shonna said Henry was hers to keep. Then she said a car hit him. Then she said she gave him away.
In the post, Jennifer suggested Shonna’s motive was reprisal after Jennifer bought a pair of puppies from Shonna in December and returned them in April.
“I DON’T HAVE ANY INTEREST IN MONEY,” Jennifer wrote. “I WANT HENRY BACK!!”
The law describes pets as property, but owners routinely call them their children. Jennifer was waging a legal and social war to get her “fur kid” back. Where on the spectrum of pet fanaticism did Jennifer and Shonna fall?
***
Jennifer sat in a booth at Denny’s, tears brimming over eggs, sunny side up.
Her story begins in November 2009, when she saw an ad in the paper for Great Pyrenees puppies.
“When I first saw him, (in person) he was this little ball of fur,” Jennifer recalled. “I mean, really fuzzy and fat, and he had a chicken wing sticking out of his mouth.”
He came loping over, dangling chicken wing and all, still damp from a bath.
At the restaurant, trundles of steam wafted into the air from her coffee cup.
“It’s still really hard when I talk about him,” she said.
At dog parks, Henry preferred people to the other dogs. He grew to 162 pounds, with a patch of brown fur on his lower back. Strangers liked to take his picture.
As a puppy, he was mischievous. He would roll in muddy water and lick up just enough to streak a brown mustache on his white fur.
For nearly five years, Henry traveled with Jennifer, who worked as an umpire. They spent springs and summers in Bloomington and winters in Florida.
She took three dogs with her to Florida in the winter of 2013: Henry, plus two Australian Shepherd puppies she’d recently purchased from Shonna. Jennifer removed the middle seats in her van so Henry and the pups could lounge.
Her trip was unexpectedly extended, and as a result, her Indiana sublet was no longer available. Jennifer needed someone to look after her dogs while she figured out living arrangements.
Shonna came forward.
“She said, ‘Bring them all to me,’” Jennifer recalled. “‘I’ll keep them until you get back on your feet.’”
On the afternoon of April 30, Jennifer turned 53. She dropped off Henry and the two pups at Shonna’s house.
All seemed well.
***
Most of their story is told through Facebook messages. Jennifer provided some. Shonna provided others. Their respective accounts are different.
In those messages lie the partial skeleton of a transaction that went very wrong. Whether it stems from ?malice or miscommunication may be impossible to sort out.
Henry is hardly mentioned until June, a month after Jennifer gave Shonna the dogs. Jennifer asked to see Henry. Shonna said no, she was too busy.
On the evening of June 2, Jennifer showed up at Shonna’s house.
***
“She was beating on my windows and my door and tried to get in my garage,” Shonna stated in her request for a protective order June 3. “ She had something in her hand that looked like a hammer ... She was yelling ‘You bipolar bitch you are going to pay. You haven’t seen the last of me.’”
***
Soon after the incident, Jennifer received a Facebook message from Shonna saying Henry was dead. A man, she said, in a silver pickup hit the dog, picked up the body and left.
The next morning, both women were at the Monroe County Justice Building. Jennifer was with a deputy checking to see if Henry’s death could be confirmed. Shonna was upstairs filing for a protective order.
Jennifer learned that dogs are considered property in Indiana and most other states. She could sue for his value, about $400, but the courts couldn’t do much to bring him home.
She did sue in a small claims court, but she also took her case to the court of social media.
She created a Facebook group called Justice for Henry, which reached more than 800 members. The group made fliers and designed T-shirts. They shared Jennifer’s story and searched for the dog.
When Shonna stated in a court document that she had given Henry away, the mob’s fervor grew.
Clearly she had lied, either to Jennifer or to the court.
* * *
Shonna Flynn sat at the dining table in her mother’s home, lips pulled tight below tired eyes.
The home was cozy, with pictures of grandchildren smiling down from the walls. Stacks of paperwork covered the kitchen counters: pages of court documents, notes from the lawyer, Facebook messages and records.
When Shonna’s eyes left the floor, she would glance wearily at the stacks. She refused to say what she did for a living and only agreed to meet reluctantly. At 49, she didn’t know who to trust.
“Every time we turn around, it’s another threat,” Shonna said. “I wake up every morning wondering what’s going to happen to me.”
It started in April, she said, when Jennifer asked her to take the dogs.
“Not keep them,” Shonna said. “Take them.”
On April 30, Jennifer left Henry and one of the puppies with Shonna. She handed over their toys, beds, rabies tags and vet records.
According to Shonna, Jennifer kept one of the Aussie puppies.
Shonna presented a Facebook message from Jennifer dated May 12. The message read, “I would never ask for the return of Henry or Brogan, I know especially Henry is in the best home he could have.”
“When she sent me a text that said ‘I will never ask for Brogan and Henry back,’ at that point the dog was mine,” Shonna said.
She said she found Henry a new home shortly afterward. He was too big to care for in addition to her own dogs. Shonna said she eventually gave both of the Australian Shepherds away as well.
The two continued to correspond until the end of May, Shonna said, and then didn’t hear from Jennifer again until she showed up on June 2.
“I did say he was hit by a car because I was hoping to get rid of her,” Shonna said. “I did it to get her to stop.”
In the days and weeks that followed, Shonna and her family felt the burn of Jennifer’s public crusade.
People claiming to be friends of Jennifer messaged Shonna and her mother on Facebook, leaving nasty messages and threats. One string of Facebook messages called Shonna’s mother a liar, thief, the Evil One’s Breeder and Mother of the Devil’s Spawn.
“It’s scary,” Shonna said, sitting at the kitchen table with her husband and mom. “I am scared. I’m afraid to go to the grocery store.”
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times.
Shonna’s husband answered it.
He listened for a while and then put the phone to Shonna’s ear. Shonna directed it to her mother.
The caller ID named Jennifer’s mother, who lives in Florida.
“I have had it,” the voice said. “Tell her she better watch herself because you never know who I might have out looking.”
Click.
Everyone stared at the phone lying on the table.
“This,” Shonna said, “is what I’m living with.”
Her mother nodded in agreement.
“Case and fact, right there.”
***
Jennifer said she was going back to Florida with her two new puppies, Stella Rose and Lucy. She didn’t want to talk about the new dogs.
She has followed up personally on at least 23 potential sightings of Henry and many more online. Her friends in the Facebook group have set up a nationwide system to check on potential sightings in their respective states.
Jennifer campaigns on, but she misses Henry. She said she hopes whoever has him is giving him love and attention. She wonders if he misses her. Does he still answer to Henry?
Shonna refuses to provide evidence of Henry’s whereabouts or existence.
Her mother offered to provide a photo of the dog with a newspaper and the most current date. But it never came.
Their case is scheduled for a bench trial Nov. 13. Jennifer wants answers. Shonna just wants it to end.
