Pet owner re-mortgages house to search for stolen dog.

HEARTBROKEN PET OWNER RE-MORTGAGES HOME TO SEARCH FOR STOLEN DOG

Dawn Maw with Angel

January 31,2013

By Heidi Dore

THE owner of a stolen champion dog has re-mortgaged her house to raise a £10,000 reward for the pet’s return.

Dawn Maw’s beloved Angel was dognapped from a car park last month.

The four-year-old German shorthaired pointer was taken by the driver of a white Transit van while she was getting her three other dogs out of her car.

I decided to increase the fee because I am desperate to get my dog back and I thought the best and quickest way to do this was to re-mortgage the house to make the reward £10,000.

Dawn Maw

Dawn, 42, said: “Initially I was offering £3,000 which was raised by the sheer generosity of my Facebook friends. I had a few calls from people claiming to know where Angel was but nothing came from them.

“I decided to increase the fee because I am desperate to get my dog back and I thought the best and quickest way to do this was to re-mortgage the house to make the reward £10,000.”

Dawn, who works as an investigator for the Department for Work and Pensions, added: “My husband, Dominic, wasn’t happy about it at first. He’s accepting it now because getting Angel back is the only way life is going to return to normal in our house.”

The desperate mother had to extend the mortgage on her three-bedroom detached house from 15 to 20 years to raise the cash. She has also forked out £500 for the services of a pet detective agency and paid a further £3,000 to distribute 15,000 posters and 35,000 business cards across the UK.

Dawn, of Cawthorne, South Yorks, paid £700 for Angel when she was a puppy. There are only two working champions of her breed in the country.

She has been microchipped and spayed and, unusually, still has an undocked full-length tail. Dawn said: “I have no idea why she was taken because she can’t breed. I expect someone knew she was a champion and thought ‘I want that dog’.

“The £10,000 reward will be for her safe return or for information that leads directly to her. It will be paid in cash and I have no issues with that, I am simply determined to find her. I just want Angel back.”

Pet insurer Direct Line said Dawn’s reward is one the biggest ever offered and 10 times more than the £1,000 available under their standard policy.

And Colin Butcher, of The Pet Detectives agency in Surrey said: “The most recent client to offer a big sum was last July and that was £5,000 – the greatest award we had ever seen before.”

South Yorkshire police are investigating the dog-napping which happened on December 6.