On good days, Karl Daniels misses the clickety-clack of the dog’s nails across the wooden floor.

“He has dementia, so he has good days and bad days,” Michelle Daniels says of her 80-year-old father. “On bad days he asks, ‘Where’s the dog?’ ”

That dog, Kimbo, a 10-year-old brown and brindle miniature pinscher boxer mix, went missing eight weeks ago, but is now fine and living with another family.

The Daniels would like their lost dog back, but it doesn’t look as though that is going to happen; its new family, who got the dog through the Toronto Humane Society, told the agency they have grown too attached to the animal to return him.

Karl doesn’t remember much. But he remembers the dog, which was his one constant companion, Michelle says.

“Dad will call for him,” she says. A retiree and father of six who grew up in Nova Scotia, Karl always had a dog as long as Michelle remembers.

“You could call him a dog lover,” his daughter says.

On Aug. 28, Kimbo scampered out when the screen door at their home shut slowly as a personal support worker walked in.

Michelle didn’t think too much about it at the time because “the dog knows where he lives” and she thought he would come back. But he didn’t. That night, when he still hadn’t returned, she drove around their North York neighbourhood in a panic, calling out for the animal.

“I hoped someone else found him and reported him,” she says.

Someone did. Earlier that Sunday at the Toronto Humane Society, someone dropped off a stray, says the society’s director of communications, Makyla Deleo.

Two days after Kimbo slipped out, Michelle says she called the Humane Society, looking for her lost dog.

She filed a missing dog complaint with Toronto Animal Services, and says she assumed the Humane Society had nothing to do with her dog, nor was she asked to come in to check whether they had any reported strays.

Meanwhile, at the Humane Society, Kimbo was being looked at. Deleo outlines the steps taken: his picture was taken immediately on arrival and posted on the lost section of their website. It was also posted to an online website called Helping Lost Pets. Kimbo was checked for a microchip or any ID — none was found. But he was found to be in good health. And Kimbo was now christened Turner.

“He must have gotten out of his collar,” Michelle says. “He always did that.”

Kimbo was put in the stray hold for dogs for five days, as is required in Toronto, which did not include the day of arrival or any non-business days, Deleo explains.

Weeks later, alerted to Kimbo’s new location by someone who saw his profile on the Helping Lost Pets website, Michelle rushed to the Humane Society. But Kimbo a.k.a. Turner had been adopted by another family on Sept. 17. Michelle was two days late.

“At that point, there was nothing that we can legally do,” Deleo says. “We went above and beyond.”

Deleo says the Humane Society contacted the individual who adopted the animal and let them know that Turner had been someone else’s pet.

“The person who adopted Turner is not interested in returning him,” Deleo explains. “At that point, (there was) nothing we could do in returning (the dog) to the original owner.”

Michelle says she offered to pay for the adoption, and cover all costs incurred by the new owners, but to no avail.

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The new owners had him for three days and they say they are attached — we had him for 10 years, she says.

Her sons, Kaiyn, 13, and Tres, 4, also miss Kimbo, she adds. But it is her father’s loss that is uppermost in her mind.

Karl asks if one of his grandsons is walking the dog, she says. “He doesn’t realize that the dog’s not here… doesn’t remember all of it.”