by Ian Weinfass, Reporter
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A disabled dog stolen by heartless thieves in broad daylight from a Mountnessing field has been reunited with its owners – and followed the reunion with a national TV appearance.
The chocolate-coloured Cocker Spaniel named Molly was being taken for a walk in a farmer’s field near Padhams Green Lane on Bank Holiday Monday by joint owners Ray Emerson and Jackie Nixon.
Molly is deaf and has a neurological problem causing one of her eyes to tilt and her head to tilt to the right.
Mr Emerson said: “We were walking our dogs, five or six of them, and we heard a vehicle coming down behind us and thought it was a farmer’s vehicle so we whistled to get them back. They all came back except Molly as she can’t hear so works by hand signals.
Returned
“They got her straight in a vehicle and away she went.”
Ms Nixon said: “I can’t tell you what those days were like. I haven’t got the vocabulary to describe it, it was just awful.”
But Molly was safely returned to the pair on Sunday after the thieves dropped her off in Ingatesone High Street.
Mr Emerson, 64, said: “I think they picked the wrong dog. They didn’t realise it was such a poorly little thing. They probably thought they could use her as a shooting dog. The main thing about it was that so many friends and people here rallied round.
“There was an advert on doglost.co.uk, people were taking that and putting it on their Facebook pages, which meant it was seen by a lot of people – if someone has a hundred friends on it and it goes to their friends the amount of people is a thousand very quickly.”
Friends printed posters, and Essex Farm Watch and hunting groups helped spread the word about Molly.
Mr Emerson is hoping the publicity will warn others to the threat of dog-napping.
Fame
And Molly got to enjoy her 15 minutes of fame too, appearing with Ms Nixon on ITV1’s The Alan Titchmarsh Show on Tuesday.
DogLost.co.uk says Cocker Spaniels are the number one type of dog targeted by thieves.
Source: http://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/brentwood_dog_owners_reunited_with_pooch_stolen_in_daylight_theft_1_1017227#
Printer-friendly version here
No comments:
Post a Comment