WATCH | Thief drags family puppy over fence

CCTV cameras have captured a stranger coaxing a 14-week-old German Shepherd puppy to get close enough for him to drag it by the leg through an electric fence and steal the dog.

Lica Erasmus arrived home in Worcester‚ about 120 kilometres from Cape Town‚ after a business meeting on Monday and immediately noticed the puppy was missing. A search of the house yielded nothing.

“I went to the video cameras because that was the only thing that would tell me what happened to the dog. On the video it shows a person hanging around in front of the house for an hour. Immediately after I left he came to the gate‚” said Erasmus.

The man appeared to have been calling the puppy‚ which eventually went to the fence‚ where he grabbed it by the front legs. The footage shows him struggling to drag the dog by its legs over the fence and then between the electrified strands of wire at the top.

The man tucked the dog under his arm and ran off. The distraught family has embarked on a massive search for their beloved pet‚ sharing images of her on social media.

“She was recently released from the hospital‚ she is still on medication. Even the vet is very upset that the dog has been stolen‚ seeing that she is recovering from an illness‚” Erasmus said.

The puppy is called Katjie (which means small cat in Afrikaans) because the family’s two-year-old child calls every pet by that name.

“My daughter recently started calling all animals Katjie. A family member has a cat and any animal she comes into contact with‚ she calls it a cat. Surprisingly the puppy responded quite well to the name‚” Erasmus said.

The entire Roux Park community have offered to help look for the missing puppy.

“As far as I can gather‚ quite a few people have had animals stolen from them. I heard that this is a regular thing. People steal the dogs to resell them. For them it is a big money-making scheme‚” said Erasmus.

“It is hard on the children. The youngest one struggles to understand. It is not as if we can point out and say the dog is dead‚ here is the body. But we can’t. This is not just a dog to us but a family member.”