The best thing about living in a small town is the drama. Word travels fast in a small town, and even faster thanks to the internet. Unfortunately, bullying does too.
A musician and creator on TikTok learned that lesson all too well when she rescued a dog out of the goodness of her heart, only to receive an influx of human cruelty.
Leni picked up a dog, whom she called “Greeter,” on the side of the road in Tennessee. When she found her, Greeter was in pretty bad shape; she’d just given birth, and had a wound from being shot with a BB gun. She was visibly malnourished, and obviously struggling.
Naturally, Leni took the dog to the her local veternarian to have her checked out, and to see if she was microchipped so that Leni could find the owner. The vet even confirmed that if Leni hadn’t picked up the dog, she probably would have died.
Leni proceeded to post online that she had found a missing dog, and was paying to take care of it until she could find the owner.
A woman named Lacie saw the posts and messaged Leni to let her know that she believed Greeter to be the golden retriever, Itty Bitty, that she and her family had lost a year and a half ago. When Leni didn’t respond, Lacie messaged her over and over again.
Once five hours went by to no response, she went on Facebook telling her community that Lacie had her dog and refused to respond to her, insunitaing that Itty Bitty was essentially being held hostage.
This led everyone in her Tennessee town to harass Leni, who was working at the time, until she responded back to Lacie’s numerous messages. Lacie has since deleted her account, but thankfully, TikTok creator Stars and the Cosmos kept track of the entire saga and relayed it to their audience.
Leni asked Lacie to stop her entire town from harassing her, to which Lacie basically told her that it wasn’t her fault, and she couldn’t control them.
Regardless, Lacie and her family sent Leni pictures of Itty Bitty and Leni noticed some discrepencies between Greeter and Itty Bitty.
First, every vet that Leni visited said that Greeter could not have been more than a year and a half in age. Based on the information Leni had been given, her dog was born in the spring of 2022, putting her at around 2 years old.
Not only that, but photos of Lacie’s dog showed a long haird golden retrievr with a completely different face shape. Per screenshots that Leni posted, Itty Bitty’s family was very resistant to the idea that this could be anyone’s dog but hers, and refused to understand why Leni didn’t think a DNA test was warranted.
They claimed that the timeline checks out, and dog hair gets brittle when they’re malnourished.
Desoite obvious differences, Leni agreed to do a DNA test with Greeter, since Lacie owned the parents of her lost dog and would be able to track wether or not they were all related. Lacie asked Leni to bring Greeter to her vet to have the test done.
When Leni couldn’t make it more than an hour from where she lived on a weekday, and didn’t feel safe entering a community that had bullied her so relentlessly online. To which the family responded that if Leni didn’t feel safe, they knew the police chief.
After much discourse and much online bullying, they agreed to come to Leni’s vet for the test.
Come to find out, the dog was not in fact Lacie’s. Something that Leni probably could have told her a long time ago. She was even able to track down Greeter’s original owners, who informed Leni that they were not longer interested in keeping that dog, and were perfectly fine if Greeter moved on to a different family.
Leni took to the internet to address the bullying and harassment she’d received thanks to Lacie and her family. It seems every step of the way, every time Leni didn’t do exactly what they wanted her to, Lacie complained about it online, and Leni received yet another influx of hate.
To this day, people are still harassing her for making it so difficult for the family to get back their dog (who was not their dog, as it turned out).
Despite such an exhausting, confusing, and tumultuous journey, Leni is coming out of the other side with a happy ending. She gets to keep her new best friend, Greeter, and Lacie has deleted her TikTok account.
Hopefully, Leni will never hear from her, her family, or her vicious community ever again.
