Reunited by Facebook – Essex woman finds dogs after internet campaign

Aug 7 2011 by Nada Farhoud, The People

Two dogs pinched from outside a supermarket have been reunited with their owner thanks to a Facebook campaign.

The social networking site came to the rescue when Mandy Millington’s pets were stolen from outside Asda last month.

Mandy had popped inside for 15 minutes, leaving Staffordshire bull terriers Milly and Molly tied up. When she returned, both were missing. The incident was caught on CCTV and the footage revealed a man and two women taking the three-year-old dogs.

Distraught

When police told her they suspected the animals could have been taken by travellers, Mandy began to think the worst.

All sorts of horrible things go through your mind, admits the 48-year-old.

Molly was a rescue dog, so I felt even worse for her because she had a horrible first year of her life.

Mandy, a mum of three, called her friend Joanna Bunker Wallis in a distraught state.

And just hours later, Jo launched the Facebook campaign.

She put together a Find Mandy’s Stolen Dogs group on a Facebook page, which I thought was brilliant, says Mandy.

Soon, the group had 295 members and everyone was making posters to help Mandy. The news spread further and further and soon everyone was changing their profile pictures to the dogs, which was amazing to see, she says.

There was even a tattoo shop in Southend changing its profile picture. Its pretty unheard of.

And the campaign proved to be incredibly effective.

Success: Facebook site

Two days after Milly and Molly were stolen, Mandy received a phone call from a woman who said she knew where the pets were.

She said she had seen the Find Mandy’s Stolen Dogs page and someone had called her from a long time back, an old friend, and said that her niece had the dogs, she says.

After finding out her pets were in Canvey Island a few miles from where she lived in Shoebury, Essex, Mandy and her sons, Ollie and Wesley, both 19, and Jay, 23, went to get them.

You could tell they were so pleased to see us all, she says.

Mandy believes the people who took her Staffordshire bull terriers planned to sell them, but thought they had been rumbled.

She credits the reunion to Facebook and says that without its users, she wouldn’t have seen her dogs again. I don’t think that the police would have been able to find them, she adds. The community did that for me.

And putting the information about Milly and Molly on the site also led to her being offered support from other missing pet groups.

Other organisations that went on there phoned me, so that lifted my spirits up.

It was only an hour after I got a call from the group Dog Lost that I got them both back thank God.

Mandy’s group has now become a focus for other people with missing pets, with members posting appeals.

I’ve got word that a Bengal cat has been found after putting a picture up on the page.

And the success story proves just how powerful networking sites can be. Its been the best ending ever, Mandy adds.

A spokesman for Essex Police says: We are carrying out a full investigation into the theft and are reviewing CCTV evidence.

Happily the dogs have been returned to their owner as a result of contacts made on Facebook.