Go fetch! Judge orders exes to bid on beloved goldendoodle

(CN) — A Delaware vice chancellor on Friday ordered two ex-lovers to hold a private auction to determine who should own Tucker, a goldendoodle they acquired while dating.

In a 15-page opinion filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery, Vice Chancellor Bonnie W. David said there was no question that Tucker is a “very good boy” who was clearly loved by his owners, Karen Callahan and Joseph Nelson.

Presented with the novel question of how to partition the pet, David ruled a private auction — where the winning bidder pays the losing bidder for ownership of the dog — was the wisest course of action.

“No mechanism can wholly compensate a losing bidder for the emotional loss of a beloved pet," David wrote — “but an auction seems to provide the fairest option for the losing bidder by maximizing her recovery if she does not take home the lot.”

Years of litigation have so far failed to resolve this Delaware dog fight.

Karen Callahan filed a petition in the Justice of the Peace Court in 2022 asking for Tucker’s return after the couple split up. The judge ruled in Callahan’s favor, but Nelson appealed to the Court of Common Pleas.

After a two-day trial, a common pleas judge determined that Callahan could not claim Tucker was illegally taken because he was jointly owned by the parties. Callahan appealed to the Superior Court, which affirmed the decision, before finally petitioning the Court of Chancery to hear the case.

The nation’s preeminent business court heard oral arguments in May on a motion to dismiss the petition.

Quoting the beloved children’s book “Shiloh,” David wrote in an opinion that month that if “you get a dog on your mind, it seems to fill up the whole space.”

“The petitioner and respondent in this partition action suffer that affliction,” she wrote.

David said Delaware’s laws weren’t wholly adequate for dividing ownership of a companion animal after a breakup.

“The parties need not worry that the Court will order partition in kind,” David wrote, citing the Judgment of King Solomon. “Nor would it make much sense to order a public auction, when the parties here attach far more value to Tucker than would any member of the public.”

David said the best remedy was a partition process that resulted in one party owning Tucker. She left it for the couple to determine the best way to achieve that end.

The former couple couldn’t agree on a method, leading to Friday’s decision.

David opened the opinion by citing the poem “The Power of the Dog" by Rudyard Kipling:

Buy a pup and your money will buy

Love unflinching that cannot lie —

Perfect passion and worship fed

By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head…

[But] [w]hen the spirit that answered your every mood

Is gone — wherever it goes — for good,

You will discover how much you care,

And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

She noted the court had never partitioned a pet before and that the procedure for doing so is “uncharted." She said a private auction was the best and fairest mechanism.

Nelson had asked the court to award ownership based on an evaluation of Tucker’s best interests, but David said nothing in the record suggests either person would harm the dog.

“To the contrary," she wrote, “I am utterly convinced that both parties love this dog and would care for him.”

Citing Callahan’s brief, the judge said a private auction would provide an objective means for determining the value and interest each party places in Tucker and ensure that the person who values the dog most highly obtains him.

David appointed a partition trustee to conduct the auction. The parties will decide a date.

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