A petition calling for the return of a puppy to its owner, a homeless man, has attracted tens of thousands of signatures. The group Cause Animale Nord said it was acting to prevent “cruelty to animals” when it decided to separate the puppy from its owner. The group said it had been prompted to intervene because it had the appearance of being drugged.

The video shows a man from Cause Animale Nord wrestling with the homeless man as a woman attempts to take the puppy away. The three grapple for possession of the puppy yelping in distress.

A third person swoops in and grabs the animal before running off. Stunned bystanders look on, immobilised. Nghi Le Duc posted the video on his Facebook page, writing that the incident was violent and shocking.

“I was in shock when I saw this scene in Paris,” he wrote. “Three French who represent of the association ‘Cause Animale Nord’ and who also represent The Law… took violently, mercilessly, a small dog – a little friend of a homeless person from him, even though this homeless person cried and begged them!”

A Facebook post by Cause Animale Nord advertising the puppy for adoption has now been removed. An online petition calling for a puppy to be returned to its homeless owner has attracted 46, 827 signatures.

The petition, posted by a user calling themselves en colère CITOYENS SOLIDAIRES France, said removing the animal was unjustified. “Nowhere does it stipulate that it has the right to remove an animal without warning. That’s what they did by violently attacking a homeless person to remove his puppy around the Chatelet area of Paris,” the petition read.

“To justify this act of extreme violence, they allege that the homeless person is a Roma and that the animal was drugged, it hadn’t been vaccinated or had ID and was malnourished.”

Louise Chen said she signed the petition because she was sickened by watching the homeless man weep as the dog was torn from his arms. “It is intolerable,” she wrote.

Others questioned the necessity of removing the puppy and then putting it up for adoption, questioning whether the puppy had been drugged at all.

“The video shows two so-called vigilantes, who steal the dog of a homeless person,” Flamme Fiammeggi wrote under his signature on the petition.

“They are lying outrageously, saying that the dog was drugged and belonged to a Roma [a persecuted minority in France], while the video shows that the poor man is molested and that they steal a perfectly healthy dog.

The puppy was reunited with his owner on Friday after Antony Blanchard, president of the France-based animal welfare group Cause Animale Nord, admitted to the organization’s wrongdoing in the theft of the homeless man’s puppy.

Although the petition may have had something to do with Blanchard’s decision to return the puppy, there were other factors at play. The group was facing possible legal repercussions for its actions, and Blanchard himself was summoned for police questioning.

After a brief stay with a foster family in the nearby French municipality of Wattignies, the puppy and his owner are now back together.

They may still not have a home or very much else to call their own. But at least the two once again have each other.