The Woman Who Kidnapped Her Dog Back From Thieves After 8-Hour Stakeout | This Morning

[Music] it's a story that's sadly becoming all too common as it's been revealed that dog nappings in the uk have increased by 20 in the past year and in a new documentary released this week the problem was made all too real my goodness well we're joined now by uh libby haydock the uh reporter from the documentary alongside uh kelly barkley and her dog eco who featured in it so good morning to morning both of you through all three of you in fact yeah um so we'll come come to you in just a moment because your story is extraordinary kellyanne and let's start first of all with libby this is your documentary um as we said the number of uh stolen pets rose by 20 in 2020 the price for puppies rose 450 percent in lockdown and there are with this particular crime less consequences than dealing drugs yeah yeah which is um created the inevitable that drug dealers and gang members have actually switched um to selling and stealing dogs because it's become so lucrative in the lockdown demand and it's really important to point out here that it's not just puppies that are being stolen that's right yeah and it's shocking actually it's um any dog that perhaps could be used for breeding uh while doing research for the program i spoke to people who because it's hard to tell if a female dog is spayed or not um you know you can tell with a male dog just so that glance and so people are actually even taking female dogs that they can't see that they've been spayed and trying to force them to breed and you could see in that part of the documentary that we watched there that there is absolutely no empathy whatsoever here no no it is so hard because i'm an absolute dog lover and this is why i wanted to do the program i've got a dog and he's my world and so for other people to be going through this it breaks my heart and it's my worst fear so to hear directly from the people that are doing it i thought was essential because these guys are dropping the ocean this is happening across the country and to better understand how we can be safer prevent it happening i want to talk to the guys who are doing it and they said themselves look we're not going to stop until the demand eases or the laws um change because at the moment it's low risk high reward and that's because the law at the moment states that a dog is seen as um a bit like a possession really so it's no different from that of an item like a phone or something so they're not taking it seriously enough so this means then that what you have done is met lots of people who are playing pet detective and they're sort of taking the law into their own hands doing the job that they believe the police should be doing well yeah it's incredible there's been this sort of movement online and helped by social media of these people who are volunteers are doing it for nothing who are retrieving people's dogs and it's quite extraordinary the lengths they'll go to it's incredible i applaud them and they are really filling this void that due to the current legislation um the police aren't necessarily acting on as much as maybe they could and and also in another twist um dogs are being stolen and then the owners are being blackmailed to buy their own dogs back for thousands of pounds yeah it's outrageous and i mean i think that the the tragedy is the thieves have totally realized um they know exactly what they're doing and what it means to people but to them they just see money it's super lucrative people do anything to get their dogs back and sadly that's what's happening and that's why the legislation we want this film to really bring up this uh discussion and to try and get something firmer in place because this will just continue until it is stopped okay libby thank you for now um and kaylee you're here with eco so as we can see this story has a happy ending because you're one of the few that actually got your precious pet you're part of your family back and it's here now um so just explain what happened because it was quite late at night but you were taking eco out for sort of a last minute walk quick pee before bed and what happened last minute p took her off the lead as normal there was nobody around it was about 2 am streets were quiet no cars i was chatting with my partner within five minutes of being there we heard like an ushering like a like this both of us heard it so we weren't just one of us is that in my head or something looked up at the same time as hearing the sound and she'd vanished like there was no people no cars and no dog around at this point i thought she could have run back to the front door because we lived just across the street immediately it went there and she wasn't there and then that heartbroken sank that's right yeah and and uh so at that stage what do you do knowing that this uh she's just saying hello i'm just saying hello okay absolutely that's a nice way to say hello you're right there absolutely just hi she's a little bit nervous about things like that sorry this is fine we'll be laughing about this for weeks um what do you do in those circumstances um well it's a moment of panic and there really is nothing you can do in that moment especially at 2 a.m uh who can you call there's no one else no one to help you so we had to just wait till the next morning um i called my father and i taught in the news we immediately started printing and making posters and just flight them up and down the main street and so your advice to anybody because as we've heard with the laws on how this works when you go to the police and that they're seen as possessions and not the loving pets that we all consider them to be is social media right here is the is the most important thing 100 i'm not the biggest social media user but hand to my heart that is the place that will help you the most you know that's where most of people look at every single day you will spread your word that way you've got to make your dog too hot to handle which is the phrase you know completely bombard people with it and yeah that's honestly that's how it was done because the chances for a while i suppose dog will probably for a bit stay local yeah but she turned out to be very close actually for the whole like she was gone for a month exactly and she was about 20 minutes away from the original spot so how did you get her back what happened because this is the extraordinary story yeah so throughout the month we had leads loads of dead leads which really got me down and towards actually finding her i was very close to giving up you know i almost wasn't getting out of bed i was like i can't do postering today there's no point um but we got this this call from a lady who said i think i've seen your dog go for a wee you know it was a black dog it was late at night i can't be sure but she had this instinct you know she said come and check it out so as i was going to chat to the lady um i was sitting in the bottom floor flat where she was opening up a doggy daycare or something like that and as i was sitting there something clicked in my mind to one of the posts on facebook had a stranger commented to say that they'd had a psychic reading with my dog wow which in the moment i was i didn't really give it a time of thought because i felt like it was wasting my time i was getting my hopes up but it was something along the lines of your dogs in a first floor flat they can see out of a window they can see a blue building a pallet and a telegraph pot which is very specific exactly the scene that you were now sitting in front of so philia whatever you want to think of that it is odd but they pretty much painted the scene so then what happened um so that made me stay for at least seven hours that was my you know i was stationed there i can't believe what i'm seeing i was like no way is this gonna be true stayed for the time it would take for a dog to go for a pee and yeah seven hours later she trotted out the front door not on a lead not on a lead so there was a woman it was a block of flats a woman standing there with the door open a bush just in front of the door obviously the dog would go out for a wee and come straight back in i'd actually just exited the car a moment before this trying to walk past the flat so in my tracks as i was walking towards that's when she ran out and you know stopped at my tracks i said her name one time eco not very loudly didn't want to cause anything she stopped in her tracks and ran straight to me and you got her back back in the car and swiped her up ran to the car and drove off and the lady was left standing there screaming her head off but she did not react in a way that you would if your dog was being napped yeah you wouldn't just stand there and say what the hell you would pounce right yeah so did you think that girl contacted the police um yeah she is sorry you know who she is the woman i don't but you know where she is i know where she is i know the location but the police were contacted at the beginning and throughout i did have a guy stationed to me to have an email back and forth communication but as i mentioned in the vice um episode it is as if your dog is an iphone that's how much attention you would get and you wouldn't was it when you got her back she was all right i mean i heard a few stories but i never will know the truth the one thing she did come back with all of her nails painted silver tiny yeah wow gives me a little bit sense of hope because it means she was lying down somewhere comfortable to have her nails painted but wow thank you thank you thank you for highlighting it uh levy thank you um so uh that documentary that we've been talking about the gangs that steal your puppies is available to watch on vice's youtube channel um and so you can you can watch that whenever you like and thank you thank you thank you thank you very much

Channel: This Morning

Views: 109,813

Keywords:

Id: JVy91k7EOgM

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 17 2021