‘Armed with guns & bullet proof vests we located my pooch after he was dognapped’

SINGER CATHY MAGUIRE HIRED A TRACKER TO FIND HER BELOVED PUP ARTHUR AFTER HE WAS STOLEN

‘They violently tried to take the dog off me again’

IRISH singer Cathy Maguire has spoken of her relief after she was reunited with her dog – gifted to her by country music legend Loretta Lynn – which had been stolen.

Dundalk-born star Cathy, who has sung for US President Joe Biden in the White House, has been living in Nashville for several years and struck up a friendship with Loretta, whose life story was made famous in the movie The Coalminer’s Daughter.

In 2022, Katie Taylor chose Cathy to sing the Irish national anthem before her fight with Amanda Serrano in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

“I have had my poodle Arthur for two years now, he was a gift from Loretta Lynn and her family,” explains Cathy

“Construction guys left the door open and he was snatched from my street.

“After a few days, we realised that somebody was holding the dog and we tried to entice them into giving it back by offering a substantial award, $5,000.

“We are in Tennessee – $5,000 is still a lot of money around here.”

Cathy says she was left heartbroken after the dog’s disappearance.

“Because the dog was a gift from Loretta and because the therapy work he does with me ... a lot of the country stars started to post about him.

POSTERS

“Among those who posted my appeal were Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris. Nashville’s biggest TV news channel also covered the story.

“We saturated the city with posters, put flyers into people’s houses, paid $500 for calls to people’s landlines and listed it on all the lost dog sites we could find.”

It was then that Cathy decided to go down a different avenue.

“After two days of searching, a friend suggested Angela Fayard, a famous dog tracker from the Smoky Mountains,” she reveals.

“We called her and she agreed to take the case.

“Angela is an eccentric character with a heart of gold, but she is also a tough southern gal.

“She was heavily armed at all times when she was searching, carrying two guns, bullet proof vest, pepper spray and, of course, she had her tracker dog, Copper.

“I thought this was excessive at first, but then when I saw the places that she covered I started to understand.

“During our search, we came across meth labs in the woods, volatile homeless people and ultimately the thieves who stole my dog who are very violent in nature.”

Cathy does not want to highlight how much the tracker was paid “but they are absolutely worth every penny if you can afford it.”

GARDEN

“Any owner will do anything to get their dog back,” she insists.

She says six days after

Arthur went missing she had a breakthrough.

“On Sunday morning, I got a call from someone who had seen Arthur in their garden.

“I went to get him and thanked the people. It transpired that Arthur had been ‘dognapped’ and had broken away from the people who stole him.

“That’s when we found him and as I was leaving the garden with Arthur, the same people pulled up in an SUV and violently try to take the dog off me again,” Cathy revealed.

“I sped off in my car with Arthur.

“It was extremely frightening and just shows the length that people will go to steal teddy bear dogs.

RESCUE

“It is an animal owner’s worst nightmare but things are on a whole new level in America.”

Cathy also managed to rescue a second dog from the house where she found Arthur, where dozens of animals were being kept there by a woman.

“The other dog jumped into my car and the woman said we could keep him as he has grown attached to Arthur,” she adds.

Kind hearted Cathy has now adopted the traumatised dog after her search for his owners proved fruitless, and she has named him Billy Bailey.