On Wednesday afternoon, as Eric Marr was going in and out of his home in Hamburg, his Greyhound, Eli got loose.

“I couldn’t catch up to him so I decided to quickly go and get my car,” Marr said.

Marr said he searched with two other people for nearly two hours.

That’s when he heard about the Facebook page “Lost and Found Pets of Lexington” and saw that Eli had been found. The woman who found Eli took him to the Greyhound Pets of America Chapter in Lexington, the same place Marr adopted Eli from in 2013.

“Which was good,” Marr said, “Safe and sound, he’s not hurt or anything."

But when Marr called the chapter, he was told he couldn’t have Eli back.

“They’ve kept Eli from me on the grounds of I’m not taking care of him and they have no basis for it. I made a mistake and he got out yesterday. I don’t feel like I’m the devil because he got out yesterday,” Eric Marr told WKYT News Reporter Monique Blair.

WKYT News Reporter Monique Blair spoke with Joel Becker on the phone Thursday night. Becker is listed as the Treasurer/Secretary on the Greyhound Pets of America-Lexington Chapter’s website.

Becker said Marr violated facets of the contract he signed when he adopted Eli from the chapter in 2013. Becker said Wednesday’s incident was the third time Eli had gotten loose since Marr has owned him, but Becker didn't elaborate on the instances in which he was referring. But Marr says those accusations are false. Marr said Becker doesn’t have any proof that Eli has been loose prior to Wednesday.

“They just arbitrarily decide that I’m a bad parent and they take my dog from me. I support them having a mechanism in place for going and perhaps retrieving dogs if they’re proved or found to be neglected or abused. Yeah they should totally step in. Maybe there are some bad dog parents out there but that doesn’t mean that everybody is, that doesn’t mean that I am,” Marr said.

“I treat him like a king, like he’s royalty and he knows he is. He has these markings around his eyes. He sort of knows he’s handsome, so he just gets treated really well,” Marr said.

Marr says he would like to see new procedures in place that would allow organizations such as Greyhound Pets of America- Lexington to take additional observations and steps prior to removing a pet from a household.

Animal Control said generally speaking, if there is a contract involved, the issue will likely need to be settled through the court system, as it then becomes a civil matter and not a criminal matter.