A team of professional pet searchers is appealing for help from the public after concluding a pampered pooch that recently went missing from the home of a West Vancouver reality TV star may have been dognapped.
Jaxsin, a one-year old purebred boxer, wandered away from the waterfront home of Ronnie Negus, one of the women featured in the reality TV show Real Housewives of Vancouver.
The dog joined the household about a year ago as a companion for Negus's 11 year-old daughter Remy, who has special needs.
Negus has spoken and blogged publicly about Remy's near-death experience in February 2012 after she choked on a piece of steak. Doctors at Lions Gate Hospital and B.C. Children's Hospital saved her life.
Since then, "Jaxsin has been Remy's best friend for the last year and a huge support system for her. He is such a part of the family - morning walks are just not the same and Remy is really missing her pal," Negus said in a statement. "It's been hard on the whole family not knowing where he is and if he is OK."
After the dog uncharacteristically wandered off from the family compound in an exclusive neighbourhood north of Horseshoe Bay, they called in the professionals to try to track down the dog.
PetSeachers is a Lower Mainland company that has successfully tracked down other missing North Shore pets.
They use trained bloodhounds and technology like thermal imaging to find missing four-legged friends, and charge $150 an hour.
In the case of Jaxsin, who'd been missing eight days, searchers faced challenges ranging from gated neighbourhoods to mountainous terrain, the Sea-to-Sky Highway and railroad tracks, said Alesha MacLellan, one of the company owners.
MacLellan said their tracking dogs followed Jaxsin's scent down the railroad tracks for a while. But then the trail went cold.
That's not too surprising, said MacLellan, noting it wouldn't be unusual for a dog to travel 25 kilometres in a short space of time.
But since nobody has called with a report of seeing Jaxsin, MacLellan believes the pooch has probably been dognapped - perhaps unintentionally.
MacLellan said the young boxer is fairly distinctive. "You don't see that type of dog roaming on their own or as a stray. If he was roaming, we would have had a sighting."
She said often people will see a lost dog and pick it up with the intention of returning it - then become attached to the animal.
MacLellan said she's hopeful someone on the North Shore may know something. The local area has many animal lovers and pet searchers often get "a huge response whenever there's a dog missing," she said.
MacLellan said Negus is also hopeful the dog will be returned.
"The biggest challenge for them is it's Remy's dog," she said.
