Dogs snatched from van
A dog owner has been left devastated after his two French bull dogs were stolen from his camper van at Glencar last week.
Sean McGann, who lives in Mullingar but is a frequent visitor to Sligo, discovered his dogs missing on Sunday, December 8th after taking a walk up to the Devil’s Chimney.
Speaking to The Sligo Champion, Sean said the dogs usually go everywhere he does, however, with the weather so bad on the day, he decided to leave them in the van for an hour.
“The dogs went everywhere with me. On Friday we did a walk on Lisadell beach, Saturday we did a walk in Hazelwood. Sunday was miserable so I didn’t bring them, and in Glencar it says you can’t bring dogs in so I thought it was the same for the Devil’s Chimney.”
Sean parked his camper van in off the road and on his return he discovered the driver’s window had been smashed and his beloved dogs had been taken.
“They had tried to force the back window to get in and they couldn’t get in that way so they smashed the driver’s side window and opened the van and took the two dogs out. They haven’t been seen since.”
Sean acknowledged the gardaí in Grange have been ‘amazing’ and were on the scene in minutes and have been investigating the thefts since.
A post on Facebook seeking the whereabouts of the dogs has been shared over 4,000 times.
“I’m just absolutely devastated about it,” admitted the dog owner, who’s originally from Dublin.
“When I got back to the van they were gone, nothing else was touched in the van.”
Sean explained that the dogs were the type of animals to sit up and look around at everything and are ‘really friendly dogs’.
At nearly two years old the dogs are thought to be valued at approximately €5,000 in total and Sean had been warned about possible thefts of them previously.
“I was warned several times, I know they’re a valuable dog and to keep them low key and I used to walk them early when it was dark and in the evening.”
Sean explains the lengths he went to in order to protect his pets from would be thieves. Such was the extent at which he kept them under wraps, Sean said he had the dogs over a year before his next door neighbour knew he had them.
To add insult to injury, Sean had only recently paid €3,000 for surgery on one of the dogs who was still in the process of recovering from it when it was snatched.
The area where Sean parked was not in view of CCTV cameras and on speaking to many in the area there was no witnesses.
“I’ve stayed in Glencar several times before but seemingly there’s been a few break ins at Lukes Bridge, Lisadell and Glencar.”
If anyone has any information they are asked to contact Grange Garda Station or Sean on 085 8159958.