To the Editor:

This breaks my heart to hear this: North Country Animal Shelter posted on Facebook to watch out for “dog nappers.” Thieves are walking and driving around, stealing our loved pets. How sick is this.

On several occasions, dogs have come up just missing. Now the possibility of someone going around, looking for our loved ones to resell, makes my heart break.

This is not the case of copper pipes in a building; it’s a breathing family member. You can sell copper by the pound but the love you have for these pets is priceless.

On Wednesday, Lisa Cole and Justin Landauer let out their dog, Zeus, a mastiff breed, at 8 p.m. to do his nightly business, not knowing this was the last time they would ever see him again.

Now, he normally takes 15 to 20 minutes and is back to the door; he comes to come back in to go to bed.

No Zeus, no sign of Zeus, no bark, no body. He just vanished.

How does a 130-pound black dog just disappear? You call, you cry, you worry, your heart breaks, my baby gone, where, why, how. One day goes by, two days, three days ­— and no sign still.

On Saturday, I loaded my dog in my truck and off I went to Lisa and Justin’s house. No words could explain how I felt.

I would be sick if Missy, my dog, went missing. Lisa and I and Missy walked the Landauer family farm fields. Now, with the though Zeus went off to be with God, we would find him curled up, resting peacefully, knowing his spirit went over the rainbow. Not a damn thing!

No body, no smell, no buzzards, no crows. Nothing out there to ease our pain on where Zeus went or where he was.

As I hugged Lisa in the middle of a hay field, there were no words to take the pain away. A body would have been closure. But this was a bad nightmare that wouldn’t end.

You don’t want to give up. You keep calling his name; you pray the phone rings with good news. Lisa waits for him to come up on the porch, put his head up against the window as if to say, “Let me in. I’m done; time to eat and go to bed!”

So please, if any one knows where Zeus is, please bring him home or at least call, drop him off at a shelter, police station anything!

Now another dog, also a mastiff breed, is missing since Sunday on Cotton Hill Road in the town of Berne. His owner, Tracy Bengtson, sheds the same tears Lisa sheds.

Her dog, Torque, has been missing since Sunday from his fenced-in area. No sign, no bark, no body. Can someone be so cruel to steal a family pet?

Watch your loved pets closely till we have closure on these pets missing. Its not just big dogs. If you look up North Country Animal Shelter, you will read small dogs are missing, too.

Any leads, strange cars, vans, trucks, seen in your neighborhood, call the local police. Report. Please help. Too many hearts are broken over this

Barbara Kennedy

Berne

Editor’s note: Cheryl Baitsholts, the dog warden for Berne and Rensselaerville, responded, “I'm not really sure if these dogs are truly being stolen or not. There are many normal things that cause dogs to go missing like being an intact male and a female being in heat five miles down the road. Or the barometric pressure falling, causing dogs to go into hiding for a day or two and then popping out when the pressure rises....Often, just before a female goes into heat, she will take a hike for two or three days and will come back on her own.”