It is every dog owner’s nightmare – the sickening realisation that a beloved pet has been snatched away by crooks.
As Twiglet the Dachshund is returned to her grateful millionaire owners Jo and Jamie Vindis, there are thousands of cases where there is no happy ending.
In fact the blight of dognapping cases has only risen, with the most recent statistics showing 2,760 a year are being taken.
The number is equivalent to around eight pets being snatched every day.
And it is a huge rise of around 283 per cent since 2015, when there were just 707. In 2019, before the pandemic, it was 2,199.
A chilling map shows the UK’s dognapping hot spots – and Jack Russells and French Bulldogs are most at risk.
Twiglet has been returned to her owners – but not every dognapping has a happy ending
Ray the dog, a snatched pug who was taken from his owners Nick Deveraux and Vanessa Reid
Strawberry the Chihuahua before she vanished, stolen by a dognapper posing as bogus dog rescue centre worker (not pictured)
Bandit, a three-year-old cocker spaniel, was taken chihuahuas for sale in Cambridgeshire and never been found
A total of 45 French Bulldogs were stolen, up 29 per cent on the previous year, while a further 24 Jack Russells were also taken – a 140 per cent rise on the ten recorded in 2020.
