Every day I am seeing posts about dog theft on local news sites and social media. It's almost always a report that a dog was "nearly stolen" or that someone was following a dog walker or talking to a dog, or a suspicious person (nearly always "foreign" or "Irish") took a photo of a dog, or a white van was seen driving round where dogs are walked. You get the idea.
But... Very rarely have any dogs actually been stolen.
Several local police forces have said in local news or on their social media that they haven't had any reports of dog theft recently. One said the last report they had of a stolen dog in the whole large city was in May 2020, yet if you were to read the social media posts in the same area you'd think dogs were having their leads cut and being grabbed out of the arms of their owners while out on walks every other day.
Another local police force hasn't had a report of a stolen dog since July 2020, and that was a spate that were all linked and all involved dogs being stolen overnight from outdoor kennels belonging to breeders or farmers. Yet again, everyone in the area is whipped into a frenzy with women saying they are too scared to walk their dogs because there are so many dogs being stolen while out on walks.
What's going on? I know dogs do get stolen, and that there is apparently an increase in reports of dog thefts this year, but are dogs really being snatched off the street while being walked? And I don't mean, have you heard lots of reports of it happening to someone's cousins hairdresser, I mean is this really happening?