I’ve hired a drone and slept in woods – anything to find my dog
WHEN a beloved pet goes missing most owners might put up a poster or two and ring around the neighbours.
But that wasn’t enough for Stuart Smith. He has climbed a search tower, hired a drone and boiled tripe on the back of a van in the hope of luring his dog Kahn back home. He has even slept on a fly-tipped mattress in a nearby wood in the hope of leaving a scent for his lost pet to follow.
Standing 6ft on his hind legs and weighing eight stone, the one-year- old Leonberger is hard to miss. But he has not been seen since a storm blew down the fence in Mr Smith’s garden in October.
A social media campaign galvanised supporters in Hockley, Essex, into putting up posters, and a volunteer canine tracker is analysing paw prints in the area. But there have been no confirmed sightings of the microchipped dog. Mr Smith, 46, a yacht skipper whose partner Sharron King, 55, is helping with the hunt, admitted some people ‘will no doubt think I’m crazy’ but has vowed to put his life on hold until his quest is over. ‘I have done absolutely everything I can think of,’ he said. ‘He is very special to me, I’ve had him since he was a puppy. I don’t have any children, so when he went missing it just broke me … I will follow-up any lead until I know it is not Kahn.’