The embattled dog-walking app Wag — accused of losing more than a dozen pooches nationwide — has another missing canine on its hands, The Post has learned.
San Antonio, Texas, resident Cody Martinez, 35, told The Post he travels often for his job as a salesman and used Wag — dubbed the Uber of dog walking — to take care of his two huskies, Sozin, 4 and Ozai, 2, while out of town.
But on Oct. 4, while Martinez was working in Philadelphia, he got a call from a Wag representative saying Sozin slipped out of his collar during a routine walk and was missing.
“I remember being at work and everything just stopped, and I felt this big pit in my stomach … it was just this ugly, ugly feeling,” Martinez recounted.
The representative told him not to worry, he said — the company would be putting up flyers in the area, “spreading awareness” and opening up a tip line so people could call in sightings.
But as the days started to pass, messages reviewed by The Post between Martinez and Wag show the heartbroken owner continuously asking what more could be done, but getting what he dubbed “the runaround.”
“It was always very passive, ‘we’re spreading awareness,’ not ‘let’s take a look at these other resources we have at our disposal we can use to find your dog,’” Martinez said.
Those other resources include hiring a professional dog tracker — a tool the company used at least twice in the Big Apple for dogs that were lost by Wag walkers in 2017 and 2018.
Even though Martinez “repeatedly asked” for other options besides flyers, Wag didn’t offer a tracker until Oct. 14 — 10 days after Sozin went missing — and didn’t send the tracker to the location until Oct. 23, nearly three weeks into the search, he said.
“[The tracker] said I had a shot if she’d gotten there earlier but the scent was gone at that point,” Martinez said.
“We had a great shot at getting him back, but because [Wag] didn’t feel the need to get that extra resource,” Sozin is still missing.
About a month after Sozin ran off, another dog named Mercy escaped during a Wag walk in Austin.
In that case, Wag flew in the same tracker within five days — and the pup was found, according to a Facebook post made by its owners.
Martinez noted that Mercy’s owners spoke to the media early on in their search, while he waited to tell his story, concerned he’d lose Wag’s help if he spoke out.
“Once I started diving in and looking into this, I realized ‘oh my gosh, this is not just a one time occurrence,’ it’s happened before and in some cases, the dogs have died under a walker’s attention,” Martinez said.
“Had I gone to the media [earlier] and spoken out, I’m sure it would’ve gotten more attention so [Wag] could minimize the exposure as much as possible so they don’t get anymore negative reviews.”
Last Friday, more than three months after Sozin went missing, Wag reached out to Martinez to set up a phone call with the company’s vice president of human resources, Dylan Allread.
“I said, OK great, maybe I’ll have continued support, we’re gonna find your dog, but instead, the conversation went to ‘we’re not going to be helping you out anymore, we’re going to be cutting ties now, we’re not going to be flying anymore, we’re just going to be abandoning the search effort at this point,” Martinez said.
For now, he’s hoping to spread awareness about his story and is spending as much time as he can with his other dog, Ozai, who’s been staring out the window everyday since Sozin went missing.
In a statement to The Post, a Wag spokesperson said it has suspended the walker that lost Sozin and “continues to monitor a tip line” for any sightings of the dog.