Little Girl, an English Bulldog

Have you ever been outside somewhere with your dog, and someone comes up and admires your dog, wanting to pet it? Can you imagine someone doing that and then grabbing your dog and running off, then jumping into a waiting car and driving away? That was the horror that began this story. It's not really known for sure what caused the dog to be returned, but since the woman got the story on the local TV news. I'm a proponent of trying to get publicity that way, so my guess is that could easily, easily have been the motiviation to return the dog. Enjoy the story.

Tempe PD: Stolen prize pup returned, reunited with owner
Reported by: Lori Jane Gliha, Brian Webb
Last Update: 3/24 11:19 am

A prized puppy stolen from Tempe over the weekend while her owners watched helplessly was returned home on Monday morning.

At just fifteen weeks old, Trisha Veloz' purebred English Bulldog, Little Girl, was taken from the lawn of the Motel 6 in Tempe near Scottsdale and Curry roads. The prematurely born pooch is the offspring of one of the top English Bulldogs in the country.

Police said the dog was returned in a blue plastic tote bag to the hotel early Monday. The pooch was then reunited with her owner at the Tempe Police Apache Substation.

"It's the best thing that could happen to me," said owner Trisha Veloz. "I'm just going to take her home and love her. She'll probably be sick of me by the end of the day." Police don't know where the dog was the entire time, but consider the case closed.

"The act was so unbelievably brazen," said Mary Aiken, a dog owner, who was present during the theft.

"It happened in the flash of an instant," said Aiken. Aiken owns the puppies' purebred English Bulldog father, known as "Champion Silverspoon Nothing Personal" or "Cooper". Aiken and Veloz said the dogs were playing in a pen outside Aiken's Tempe motel near Hancock and Scottsdale Road when a man approached the pen to look at the dogs. He just came up and said, "'Oh cute puppy,'" said Veloz, describing the moment before the man grabbed the dog.

"This man walked up kind of spontaneously, reached down, grabbed the puppy and ran off to the side where there was a light-colored Avalanche (vehicle)," she said. Veloz said she wrote down the license plate number, but according to Tempe police, the number didn't match the light-colored (silver or champagne-colored) vehicle on which it was placed. Tempe police told ABC15 that could mean Veloz obtained wrong numbers or the license plate or the vehicle could be stolen.

"If the person who took this dog has any shred of decency left, please consider what you've done, and give this puppy back to its owner," Aiken said, admitting the person who took the dog may have taken the animal for monetary reasons.

She added, "For us, the financial part of the puppy's worth is not what is so important. This puppy is loved by all of us."

"I just want her back safely," said Veloz, fighting back tears. "That's the most important thing to me is to have her back safely, and that's it."

"Please, no questions asked, just take her somewhere safe," she said. "Bring her back home to me."

Aiken was in town for the 7th Annual AKC Fiesta Cluster Dog Show.

Source: http://www.abc15.com/content/news/phoenixmetro/story/Tempe-PD-Stolen-prize-pup-returned-reunited-with/WhwLReG2N06cYLokycJehw.cspx