Pet dogs raised the alarm on missing woman

TWO pet dogs raised the alarm that their owner was missing when they returned home without her.

Police have confirmed that Oban woman Crystalla Dean’s 22-year-old daughter phoned them after her mother’s pets came back on their own.

Air, land and sea searches over the past week have failed to find the 52-year-old,who was last seen by her daughter at the house they shared in Oban last Thursday.

As Police Scotland drafted extra officers in to Oban yesterday to stop and interview motorists and pedestrians in their search for information, Sergeant Iain MacNicol said: “It’s a mystery where she has gone and we are doing everything we can to establish what has happened.

“The daughter was away on Thursday night. She left the house about 8pm and her mother was there. She went to work on the Friday and when she went home on the Friday evening her mother was missing.”

As only one of her mother’s three pet dogs was in the house her daughter thought Ms Dean had taken the other two out for a walk.But Sergeant MacNicol said alarm bells started ringing when the two collie/Lurcher crosses returned alone.

He said: “The two dogs came back later that evening on their own. That was what told the daughter that this was something unusual and she treated it seriously.”

Family and friends have also been out searching with Ms Dean’s dogs in Dunollie Woods and an area known locally as the Witches, where she likes to walk.

Sergeant MacNicol added: “We are looking for people who may have been in this vicinity a week ago.”