[Purple]

Oh where have her little dogs gone?

Owner is serious about $4,000 reward

By Michael Stetz
STAFF WRITER

June 2, 2007

SAN DIEGO – Find two missing dogs and a serious payday awaits you.

Try $4,000.

That's how much Kim Marlowe is offering anyone who can find her missing Boston terriers.

She means it.

“Absolutely,” she said. “One hundred percent.”

The Ocean Beach resident has been putting up hundreds of signs and fliers throughout the city, and they're rather eye-catching.

It's because of that $4,000 figure. That's a lot of Benjamins for a Benji.

“I love them very much.”

People offering Great Dane-size booty for their lost pets, while rare, does happen.

Check out Fidofinder.com, where pet owners list missing pets. The highest reward offered is $5,000 for a Maltese lost from – where else – Beverly Hills.

Most rewards for the nearly 1,200 dogs listed, though, are in the $500-and-below range.

Marlowe happens to believe the two terriers – Snickers and Corona – were stolen while she was taking them for a walk on the beach two weeks ago.

She saw a bunch of kids around a bonfire and started talking to them. The dogs wandered off, and she never saw them again. She thinks she was deliberately distracted and the dogs were whisked away.

It was not a good night for Marlowe. Her home was also burglarized when she went rushing off to search for her pets, she said. She thinks it might have been the same people who stole her dogs.

Marlowe just wants the dogs back, no questions asked.

They weren't cheap. Snickers, a male, cost $2,500 and Corona, a female, was $1,500.

Marlowe went as far as to hire a pet detective to try to find the dogs. But even the Columbo for canines had no luck.

“We found the scent, and it went to a nearby parking lot,” said Annalisa Berns of Pet Search and Rescue, meaning the dogs were probably driven away.

But it doesn't necessarily mean they were stolen. Somebody could have thought they were lost. In this case, the dogs – neither of whom was fixed – were on the beach without leashes and could have run off themselves, she said.

Berns is not shocked by the reward; she once worked a case where the reward was $10,000.

Another time? “The reward was a car.”

Have you seen the Marlowe's dogs? Her number is (858) 204-3833.