Peninsula couple spread net wide in search for missing dogs
IT has been 14 days since Alan Funnell and Louisa Andrew lost their dogs, but they are not willing to give up, sacrificing sleep, food and work, to search for their beloved pets.
Shortly after Ms Andrew let 9yearold black poodle Dice and 3yearold fox terrier cross Weed out of the car when they arrived at the couple’s Seal Point Rd property on the Otago Peninsula, on October 17, the dogs disappeared.
She had previously not been letting the pair out together, because they sometimes ran off, though they usually came back.
‘‘This time they didn’t. I assumed they were over the back of our property, but they weren’t,’’ she said.
Ms Andrew, an equine dentist, said losing her dogs was the same as losing a family member.
‘‘It’s like no other thing, just emptiness.’’
The couple spent four days scouring the side of their 40acre property just down the road from their home and where the dogs disappeared, believing they were trapped in a hole or bush.
After being contacted by people who had seen the post, Ms Andrew even got in touch with an animal psychic who advised them to concentrate their efforts on the other side of the property.
They spent the next week doing so, with no luck.
Mr Funnell, the garden manager at Glenfalloch, said he was brokenhearted.
‘‘I used to wake up in the morning, look out at the view and feel happy. Now it’s a feeling of devastation.
‘‘I haven’t been able to work because it’s hard to do anything but search when you know they could be out there somewhere, possibly hurt.’’
Since the dogs had gone, the couple said they had also struggled to sleep, and did not feel like eating.
They had doorknocked and put up flyers across the harbour area, as far as Harington Point, to no avail.
The Facebook post the couple uploaded had been shared more than 2000 times and they had received many messages of support.
Now they were calling on the wider community to help them.
They wondered if possibly the dogs, together or separately, had been picked up by a visitor or visitors to the area, and implored anyone who thought they might have seen anything to get in touch.
‘‘If anyone’s even sighted the dogs, we’d love to hear from you,’’ Ms Andrew said.
‘‘Life’s not the same without them.’’