That Dog Gone Tessa (Mean Brookline Edition)

January 11, 2013

Last week the hardwalking staff at Campaign Outsider reported on the flood of Lost Dog flyers in the Brookline Village area compliments of local author Dennis Lehane, whose pursuit of his runaway pooch Tessa is positively Javertesque.

Now comes the backlash. From today’s Boston Herald:

BI1E2289.JPGOfficial hounding Dennis Lehane on fliers

A by-the-book Brookline bureaucrat is giving crime scribe Dennis Lehane until Monday to pull down all the fliers throughout town for his beloved missing beagle.

The heart-wrenching ultimatum all but dooms the search for Lehane’s runaway pooch.

“There is a town bylaw that prohibits that,” said Brookline Public Works Commissioner Andrew M. Pappastergion. “It was a hardship. They were trying to find the dog and we turned our eyes away for a week. They’ve been up there for two weeks and there are hundreds.”

 

The piece also quotes a Brookline dog owner who says she’s “very, very upset with this town. It’s very disconcerting to me. They are not littering. They are posting on lampposts. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.”

Some Herald readers, however, aren’t as sympathetic. Representative samples:

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That’s in bad taste, eh?

But it’s the pitchforks that are out at Lehane’s Finding Tessa Facebook page, as Erin Clossey noted on her Brookline Tab blog last night:

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Clossey ends her post, “God, I hope they find this dog soon.”

Amen, Erin. Amen.

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Our Dogged Local Tabloid (Dennis Lehane Edition)

January 4, 2013

When the Boston Herald gloms onto a good human interest story, it’s like a dog with a bone.

And that goes double for the sad tale of author Dennis Lehane’s dog Tessa, who’s been missing since Christmas Eve.

Today the feisty local tabloid devotes a full page to the dog hunt:

BI1E2265.JPGLehane family ‘can’t give up’

As temps plunge, desperate search for Tessa

Best-selling crime writer Dennis Lehane and his wife, Angie, announced yesterday they are 
offering a cash reward for the safe return of their beloved beagle, 
Tessa, as overnight temperatures have plunged into single digits and days stretch on without word of where she could be.

“We just want her home — want her back with my kids, back with my dogs — we just want her to be happy,” Dennis Lehane said yesterday, addressing whomever may have the pooch.

“So If you can do that, believe me, there won’t be a single question asked … she just needs to come home,” he said.

 

This is the umpteenth piece the Herald has run on the runaway pooch. If the Herald web archives weren’t the unmitigated disaster they are, we’d link you to a bunch of them. But this is what you get when you plug Dennis Lehane into the search box:

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And then, this:

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Anyway, the Boston Globe is also covering the story, but on a more modest level. From today’s Names:

chin010313lehanedog_liv04-Dennis Lehane and friends continue search for lost dog

Boston author Dennis Lehane asked his social media followers on Thursday to help him continue his search for his lost dog, Tessa. Lehane invited supporters to meet him at the Stop & Shop in Brookline and at the McDonald’s in Brighton where he and his family and friends put up signs with Tessa’s picture and contact information. Lehane, who reported the rescue dog’s disappearance late last month, has said that he’ll name a character in his next book after anyone who locates the pup. Tessa is a black and tan beagle. Lehane says that if you see her, don’t chase her. There are tips for approaching lost dogs on Lehane’s Finding Tessa Facebook page.

 

That’s the long and short of it.

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