Here are several pictures of Rags, because she looks different everytime she does anything! She is 7 years old, I got her from Manytears when she was 5 months – they had rescued her from death row. She had just gone Grade 7 agility – ready for Champs, and was due to audition for Annie – so while a terrier, with terrier things to do, a loving, responsive, cute and trained companion who was having a whale of a time, settled in her pack, going jumping and swimming regularly. I have also put her letter which came out in Dogs Today – tells you more.

She was not “stolen” as such – we are in a worse limbo than that. I took her for a walk in the fields behind the house, where we often go, and she went through the gap in the hedge into the next field with my sheepdog, I was about a minute behind her, and when I got there she was gone. She often went hunting squirrels in the wood at the edge of the field, and when when I shouted, she would come back. Sometimes she would take longer, and I would have to take the sheepdogs home, because they can’t stand shouting, and go back and shout loudly, but she would always come back in at the absolute most 20 minutes from when she first went. This time she didn’t come back at all.

She has never crossed the roads, but a field further on is the motorway service station, and she could have followed a pheasant along the hedge line to their lorry park and got in a caravan – we camp a lot at agility shows, she is very friendly, she would just think it was home.  Someone might have thought she was dumped – we had just come back from an agility show, and she was still wearing her competition collar – no tags allowed.

It is not a place where people walk dogs, there is no parking, and there are lots of country parks nearby. It was 6.45 am when she went, there was no-one else about. A friend thermal imaged the whole area several times, there were about 30 of us searching the following day – roadsides, hedges etc – with dogs. I took my sheepdogs out every night to bark round the area – they bark on command, she would have barked back – John also rigged up a snake camera, and put it down holes, though I had her 7 years and she had never done holes. I am reasonably sure that she was not alive or dead in the local area. We have postered within about 6 miles, the whole agility world knows about her, we have had appeals on 3 radio stations, she has a fb page and twitter. We have had a possible sighting in Southampton, and currently trying to investigate one in Shirley, otherwise have been able to track down and discount nearly all possible sightings. I am fairly sure she was picked up, and possibly kept, possibly sold on.

I have tried to contact every vet in the country with a poster and her details – most have been fantastic, but I have had the one that said she wouldn’t be scanned even if she sat under her poster because she would be there with an owner; I also know of someone with a “rescued” dog with chip, the vet knows where it belongs, but won’t tell the real owner “because of the Data Protection Act”

I had a major row with Birmingham City Council, because they don’t scan or record details of dead dogs on the roads, they just chuck them away – but a friend went to the depot, and gave her posters out to the lorry drivers who were sympathetic. But the council don’t care, wont reply to my emails because I don’t pay them council tax – she went missing in their area – I live on the borders – and I wasn’t even allowed to speak to their dog warden, tho she got in contact with me herself.

But so I have no idea where she is, if anyone is looking after her – I assume they are, or she would have been picked up, though I can’t check every rescue in the country every week – they were all notified, and the dog wardens, when she went – and as the microchipping nonsense stands, I have about 2% chance of getting her safe home; meanwhile her two elderly friends have lost their health entirely since I lost her, and I’m going to lose them too fairly shortly – they are in the vets about every week since Ragsie went, the little cocker has terrible seperation anxiety – she is 12 and never worried before.

Links for Rags arehttp://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/270218086341610/?bookmark_t=group http://www.doglost.co.uk/dog_blog.php?dogId=32420  Twitter @HelpFindRags and you-tube  http://youtu.be/_n8yWTJF7xk

Sorry if I have overloaded you with info, but thought it was better to give you everything. I have had one reply from an MP so far, saying “Thank you”, and have I hope, organised for my MP, who is good, to get more letters along similar lines. I just hope we can get some sense out of this.

Best wishes,

Caroline

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