Owners desperately searching for dog possibly stolen from Cochrane farm

The owners of a trained livestock dog are frantically looking for their guardian pet after she mysteriously went missing from their farm northwest of Calgary in the middle of the night.

Just a few days shy of her third birthday, a white Maremma named Dixie — a highly-trained livestock guardian — went missing from a Cochrane farm on last week.

Now, her family is franticly searching for her, and is learning just how common this kind of theft is.

“Her Apple Air Tag had been removed, it wasn’t broken and it was discarded on the side of the highway which at that point we assumed and the RCMP assumed that she had been stolen,” said Aynsley Foss, Dixie’s owner.

In a statement to CityNews, the Alberta RCMP says it is investigating the case and right now Dixie’s Air Tag, which was found just 15 kilometers away from the farm, is being examined for further leads. 

Foss says they launched a massive search mission for Dixie alongside their friends.

“We’ve searched by drones, searched by helicopter in the area. We door knocked on hundreds of doors, we passed out hundreds of fliers all over Calgary, we’ve had different teams go to different areas up in outskirts of Calgary,” Foss said. “We’ve chatted to several people and we’ve done a huge social media campaign and we haven’t heard anything.”

Foss says during her search for Dixie, she has heard from several other Albertans — some of whom say their stolen dogs were eventually found — but some others claim their dogs were located in another province, where they had been sold.

But, the Calgary Humane Society says at a time when shelters are overwhelmed with animals, this doesn’t seem to be the case in Calgary.

“We hear from time to time about dogs being stolen as bait dogs or dogfighting rings as well. But at the same time, there is absolutely no actionable intelligence that there there’s organized fighting going on, you know, locally either,” said Brad Nichols, director of operations and enforcement with the humane society.

“So, you know, it’s probably a bit of storytelling. You know, ‘I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend,'” he explained. “Legitimately, some of these dogs may have been stolen and some of them may have strayed off their properties.”

Regardless of what occurred and how it happened, Foss says, she is hopeful for Dixie’s safe return in time to celebrate her third birthday on December 14.

“We have a $5,000 cash reward for whoever returns her safely and with no questions asked — we just want her home,” she said. “Everyday I’d wake up and think today’s the day we’re gonna get her, she’s going to come home and when the day ends, you feel defeated.”