I recently read this article and was shocked by the staggering estimation that 2mm pets are stole a year: http://www.moderndogmagazine.com/articles/dognapped-frightening-facts-pet-theft/147.

Consider me skeptical that 2mm pets are stolen a year but whatever the number is it is much larger than I would have anticipated. The article triangulates various sources of stolen pets online and I am coninced from reading it that this is not a small problem. Dogs are stolen to be sold, for bait for fighting, for puppy mills, for lab testing, and for ransom. Pure bred dogs can be expensive so some people are attracted by this but I am very surprised that pets are such a target. Apparently, some people even hold dogs ransom, get you to send the money, and then still do not return the pet.

The article mentions an HBO documentary calling Dealing Dogs which is about a group of dog dealers in the south. I have not heard of it but I plan to watch it. The article also has some good advice on what to do if your dog is stolen. You should go out and put out flyers everywhere in a 1,3,5,10, etc radius every couple of days going further out to stop the people from being able to sell your dog.

It seems like a big problem here is education, that dogs are stolen so if you are buying a dog then you should be aware of that possibility. We have our dogs microchipped and just thinking through this I am now wondering when this would even matter in a theft. If they were lost and picked up by someone, a shelter would look for the microchip. However, if someone did not think they were lost, they would never be checked for a microchip. Maybe at some point a new owner would ask a vet to put in a microchip and they might put the chip in and then look to see that it worked but I have no idea.

I read articles every day on animal rescuing and I have been unaware of how large of a problem this is until this article. I knew this happened some time but never to this degree, so I am glad to see an article like this out there. People on the other end of such a transaction need to be educated that if they do insist on buying a pure bred dog rather than rescuing one they should go to a respected breeder and not buy a dog anywhere else.