Dog reunited with owners eight years after being stolen

A cocker spaniel which was stolen eight years ago has been reunited with its owners.

There was “not a dry eye in the house” when Daisy was taken back to her home in Dorking, Surrey Police said.

The black-and-white working gun dog was stolen along with three other dogs in November 2016, when thieves took the pets from the garden kennels they were housed in, police said.

Officer said one of the dogs was killed after being hit by a car as it tried to escape and the other two stolen dogs have never been found.

Nearly eight years to the day since Daisy was taken, on Tuesday October 29, police were told that someone had tried to update her microchip details.

Pc Laura Rowley, a rural crime officer at Surrey Police, contacted the microchip company to find out the details of the new owners, who had adopted the spaniel in good faith and did not know she had been stolen.

On Thursday October 31, officers from the Mole Valley Safer Neighbourhood team completed a three-hour round trip to take Daisy, who is now slightly deaf, back her original owners in Dorking.

The officers said: “There was not a dry eye in the house when she was reunited with her owners.

“She recognised them immediately and stuck to them like glue.”

The other dogs – Tilly, a black working cocker spaniel, and Storm, a patchy white Patterdale terrier – remain missing and are believed to be elderly or have possibly died because of their age, police said.

“However, if you have any information that may be relevant, please contact us quoting PR/45160097926,” a Surrey Police spokesman said.

Dog thefts have been on the increase across the UK.

According to police figures, 2,290 dogs were stolen last year – a 6% increase from 2022.

Surrey Police previously said the national increase in demand for dogs and puppies during the Coronavirus pandemic “also created a gap in the market for dog thieves and illegal breeders”.