I sobbed ...Belle still knew me
Four-year-old springer spaniel Belle was stolen from owner Trisha Joseph’s home in Powys, Wales, in December 2016. Mother-of-one Trisha, 45, a gardener, and partner Wyn Price, 56, a pest control officer, were reunited with her just before Christmas. Trisha says: We’d had Belle since she was three months old. She slept in a locked barn attached to the house, with her puppy Bess and our terrier Holly. One evening we noticed the lock on the barn was broken and Belle and Holly were gone. Bess was running around distraught. It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
We spent the night calling their names through the woods near our home. The police came but there wasn’t much they could do.
Two days later we received a call to say Holly had been found 100 miles away in Worcester and taken to a vet’s where her microchip identified her. It was a bittersweet moment: we had Holly back, but where was Belle?
I spent hours checking with missing pet charity dog Lost, and creating Facebook accounts. I put up posters and searched dogselling websites. I looked for puppies being sold when I knew she might have had a litter.
Almost two years to the day, I woke up and my phone was going crazy. I had at least 40 messages from people I didn’t know saying they’d seen Belle being sold on a Facebook gun dog page. I messaged the seller and sent a photo. He replied immediately, full of apologies. He’d bought her six months ago for £300 and had no idea she’d been stolen.
He was only 18 and couldn’t have been more helpful. We arranged to meet in Worcester the next day. I was in such a mess, my sister had to drive. Then she suddenly said: ‘It’s her Trisha, it’s Belle’. I ran to Belle. I hugged her, sobbing, telling her how much I loved her. She was timid but her tail was wagging, she knew me still.
She had been called Lady since being taken and although I could tell she’d been bred from, she had been treated well by her owner of the past six months. When we got home Wyn, who is not an emotional man, fell to his knees. Holly and Bess remembered her, too.
We never discovered who took her and, needless to say, our dogs sleep in the house now.