Cathy Blaine and Tracy Smith, of Port Elmsley, Ont., were away for a week in December 2007 when their two-year-old Pug ‘Caya’ disappeared from a friend’s front yard after being let out to pee. That same month, Tracy Law’s eight-year-old Siberian Husky ‘Sheseido’ disappeared from a dog park.

In mid-February 2008, Bert Clark left Toronto for one week, putting ‘Huckleberry,’ his three-year-old Labrador Retriever, in the care of a dog walker. She left the dog tied up outside a bakery while she ran inside to make a purchase. When she came back, Huckleberry was gone.

At the end of March, Tracey White’s Miniature Schnauzer ‘Buzz’ vanished from her yard in the small town of Cardinal, Ont. Two days later, her mother, Laurel White, reported her own Miniature Schnauzer, ‘Simba,’ had been removed from his lead in the front yard of her ground-floor Ottawa apartment.

A handful of seemingly unrelated incidents – all taking place in one province within a few months’ time. Statistical small potatoes, you could call them. Or they would be if anybody were actually keeping statistics on stolen companion animals, because the police, humane societies and insurance companies don’t.

Yet when such an event occurs to you and your dog, it looms very large indeed. It consumes your life, your time, your energy and your money. Dire possibilities prey on the brain – what might have happened, what still might be happening to your missing pet?

“You could put yourself in the grave with the worrying,” Cathy Blaine says. “It was a cold winter – is she lost outside, has she eaten today? I never cried so much in my life for anything.”

“It has been absolutely devastating,” adds Tracey White. “It’s horrible not to know what’s happened to your baby. It’s like losing your child.”

Motives
A dog may be stolen for a variety of reasons. It could be by somebody who’s simply taken a fancy to the animal and wants a pet of their own, or perhaps by an estranged partner who views the pet as their own. More ominous are thefts-to-order from puppy mill operators seeking fresh breeding stock, or underground dogfighters on the lookout for likely breeds as well as live animals to be used in “training.”

Although there are no hard facts to point to, organizations such as the U.K.’s Dog Trust and the U.S.A.’s Last Chance for Animals estimate that stolen dogs in their respective countries total from the thousands to the tens of thousands.

In Canada, “Dogs are stolen all the time,” according to Jennifer Montague, a spokesperson for the Western Quebec SPCA, though she can’t give an approximation of how widespread the problem is. Unspayed females and unneutered males, especially purebreds, often comprise thefts destined for puppy mill purgatory. With prices for purebred puppies running $600 and up, dog farming can prove a lucrative, if filthy, business.

“My heart aches for the family dog that can be so quickly taken from their home,” says Montague. “They will never sleep on a clean surface again, will never run in the grass. Their eight-to-10-year [term] is grim and only the very strong will survive the cold barns in the winter and the hot humid days of summer.”

Such a fate appeared to be the case behind the orchestrated disappearance this January of ‘Tuuka,’ a two-year-old Golden Retriever stolen from Cherisse Hansen’s fenced backyard in suburban Ottawa by a man with a pair of wire cutters, who was reportedly driving a pickup truck with stolen licence plates.
Yet Tuuka didn’t end up in a puppy mill. He was returned by a legitimate rescue organization that had adopted the dog from a strictly illegitimate group – one that apparently believes in “freeing” family pets from backyards and leashes. Ottawa police have taken statements from the concerned parties and charges against the thieves could be pending.

A similar incident occurred with ‘Vegas,’ Diane Beaulieu’s 11-year-old Doberman Pinscher, who was taken from her lead in Beaulieu’s garden in Chilliwack, B.C. It took 10 days of searching by her owner before the abandoned dog was finally discovered by the local SPCA – half-starved, with bloody, torn paws, tottering around in a field.

During that time, Beaulieu became convinced that Vegas had been taken by a regional animal-rights or-ganization that disapproved of dogs being left tied up in their yards.

What her dog couldn’t tell her “rescuers” was that she was suffering from the final stages of wobbler syndrome, a chronic degenerative disc disease of the neck vertebrae. Because walking was so difficult, her best quality-of-life option, according to her own vet, was ly-ing out in the sun on the end of a leash.

Despite Beaulieu’s certainty about the identity of the thieves – she believes they held the dog in a dirty, disease-ridden barn with other “rescues” until perhaps the publicity surrounding the dog’s disappearance, or her obvious medical needs, obliged them to dump her – no criminal charges have been laid. Indeed, Beaulieu claims the police were not particularly helpful.

Sometimes this is the fault of the owner for not immediately reporting their dog as stolen, or for not being more insistent that the police treat the matter as serious property theft.

Police response
Const. Wendy Drummond, media rela-tions officer with the Metro Toronto Po-lice Force, says that in her jurisdiction, these reports are taken seriously and investigated as actively as possible. She also makes the point that part of the investigation might include a review of tapes from closed-circuit cameras, which are ubiquitous in many big cities now.

No such luck occurred, however, when Bert Clark’s Lab Huckleberry was stolen straight off Yonge Street, in the heart of busy midtown Toronto. But Clark had a sizeable ace up his sleeve. After hearing about the theft from his dog walker, he instantly returned home and offered a mammoth reward – $15,000 – for Huckleberry’s safe return.

The resulting widespread public attention over the reward gave the police something to go on. Two men showed up with the dog to claim the money. They were arrested and are currently under indictment. Two teenagers who appear to have initially taken the dog, surrendered to police and were later taken to court.

Dognapping for reward money is not common in Canada, yet the U.K.-based organization Doglost claims that it might be a growing trend, fuelled in part by drug users looking for a easy source of cash. Rumours of pay-outs as high as £20,000 might be encouraging this illegal activity.

Perseverance
For most people whose pets have been stolen, however, resolution and restitution will remain just a dream. To date, the whereabouts of Caya, Buzz and Simba are a mystery, and their families are left to deal with the unending grief and worry. They blanket the neighbourhood with signs, post Internet notices, contact veterinary offices, animal shelters and rescue organizations. Some, like Tracey White, refuse to give up hope. Others, like her mother Laurel, feel their hope fading away.

But the best advice from those who have successfully recovered their animals is to keep on keeping on. Tracy Law did just that when she accidentally dropped her dog’s leash after tripping in a snow-filled park. Sheseido, her rambunctious Husky, took off and did not come back.

When a week went by and the dog still had not been found, Law figured somebody must be holding onto her, and reported the dog as stolen to the London, Ont., police. In the meantime, however, the local humane society had retrieved the dog from an unnamed person’s backyard, where she had been left, tied up, without any water, and howling her head off.

Humane society officials didn’t pursue the case against the owners of the home where Sheseido was found, because they could not prove criminal intent. But neither did they cross-check missing-dog reports with animal control, a separate entity in many municipalities, or tell Law, in any of her repeated phone calls, that they had a Husky matching Sheseido’s description.

Finally, two weeks later, somebody at the humane society saw a web site posting Law had made and contacted her. Law was ecstatic to at last find her dog, but infuriated by the ensuing request to pay for her pet’s two-week shelter stay – this despite the fact that the dog was microchipped, something else the humane society had neglected to check.

Since Law’s dog is purebred and not spayed, she likely would represent a prime target for puppy mill thieves. Law suspects this was the reason behind Sheseido’s bodily removal off her front porch, four years previously. The dog was returned several days later by a pair of “breeders” who had her but claimed they hadn’t realized she’d been stolen until they saw the flyers Law had spread around town.
If there is a single key to retrieving your stolen pet

it is exactly this: publicity, and lots of it. The more people are made aware of the situation, the harder it is for a thief to hang onto property that is proving too hot to handle.

How to thwart dog theft
No dog, unless it’s by your side day and night, is ever 100-per-cent secure. But you can minimize its risk of being stolen.

Purebred dogs are valuable commodities, especially to puppy mills. Spaying or neutering your pet is your best defence against unlawful breeders. If you own a female, consider attaching a boldly lettered tag reading “spayed” to her collar. If your dog is microchipped, add the security company’s tag as well.

Microchipping and tattooing (on the inner thigh, since ears can be cut off) are vital to the retrieval of your pet. These will also, under the law, prevent your pet from ending up in a research facility.

Keep your dog collared, even around the house or backyard. A collar and tags will aid in tracing and identifying your pet, whether it playfully escapes or is physically removed.

Never leave your dog tied up outside a store.

Avoid leaving your dog in your car, especially if the vehicle is left unlocked. Never do so on a hot day anyway.

Beware of strangers who appear overly interested in your pet.

When allowing your dog to play off-leash in a park, keep your eye on him at all times.

Make sure your backyard has a high fence and consider adding a warning device, such as a cowbell to its gate. Avoid leaving your dog alone in the yard for any length of time.

Never leave your dog outside on a tethered leash.

In case of emergency, always keep an identification kit on hand. This should feature a verbal description of your dog, plus notations on distinguishing marks and characteristics, type of collar and tags as well as microchip and tattoo numbers. Include as well several up-to-date photos showing your pet from all angles.

Consider buying pet insurance from a company that also covers the cost of locating a missing animal. Margaret Koshinsky of Winnipeg’s Petsecure (formerly Pet Plan) Insurance says that regardless the level of plan, her company offers up to $1,000, with no preliminary deductable, for advertising and reward expenses.

What to do if your dog is stolen

If you are sure someone has taken your pet, contact the police right away. Insist that they take a stolen-property report and treat your concerns seriously.

Notify all shelters and animal control offices within a 50- to 100-mile radius. If you can, visit the shelters personally, and often. Sometimes dogs can be overlooked by overworked staff, or physical descriptions don’t match up.

Contact all breeders in the same area, as well as the provincial and national breed clubs.

Blanket your immediate area with flyers, putting them up on phone poles, in grocery and other retail stores, near schools, police and fire stations, as well as in core places such as veterinary offices, shelters, pet stores and grooming shops. Hand out as many flyers as you can to postal employees, garbage workers, couriers – basically anyone who works a beat. Give them to your friends and fellow dog owners, especially those who have the same breed, as their eye is specially attuned to its appearance.

Advertise in every paper and on ev-ery lost-dog web site you can. Call or write to your local paper, advising them of the theft and asking them to warn others in the neighbourhood. Do the same thing with local TV and radio stations.

Be aware of scammers, who may contact you and offer to return your dog if you send them the money to do so, or who request a reward up front, before returning your dog. Better yet, report them to the police.

By Leslie C. Smith
Leslie C. Smith is an award-winning writer who shares her life and Toronto home with a Standard Poodle named ‘Tally,’ one of the great loves of her life.

(Appeared in September, 2008 issue. To learn more about our print edition click here)