“I’ve published 18,000 posters, 70,000 business cards, and 30,000 fliers, and I’ve spent about ￡5,000 [$7,600] on advertising, but she’s still not been found.”

Dawn Maw, 42, has done all this to recover Angel, a German Shorthaired Pointer, one of her beloved champion gun dogs. There are just two such champion gun dogs in England, according to the Telegraph, and Maw had both of them.

But in December, as she was loading her three dogs into her car, Angel disappeared.

“As I turned around I saw a white transit van,” she told the Telegraph. “It was 7:30 a.m., and it had only just got light. She was obviously stolen, and whoever has got her doesn’t want to give her up. Whether she was stolen to order, I don’t know.”

Since then, Maw has waged an all-out campaign to find Angel. To free up cash for all the posters and fliers, Maw and her family have skipped vacations and meals out. She’s talked to police and hired a private investigator. And she’s launched a FindMissingAngel Facebook page, which is full of information about the search, a search that has gripped England and garnered much media attention. As Angel was a show dog, Maw has volunteers travel the country attending dog events while wearing “Angels Army” clothing, hoping to raise awareness.

“People have said to me, ‘Why don’t you just get a new dog?'” said Maw. “But it’s not like getting a new car. You can’t just replace her.”

Now Maw has made news again. After remortgaging her house, she’s upped her reward to ￡10,000 ($15,000).

“I didn’t tell the bank what I needed the money for,” she said. “My husband was a little dubious before we approached the bank, but he would never have stopped me because Angel was part of the family.”

Maw has also begun championing “halo scanners,” which are more accessible than regular scanners, and Bruce Forsyth campaign’s Vets get Scanning, which aims to get vets to routinely scan all dogs that come into their offices.

Maw says her “biggest hope” is that someone will find her and a vet will scan her, and that all her efforts will pay off. We’ll keep you updated on the search.

“She wasn’t just a dog, she was everything to us, a real family member,” said Maw. “She wasn’t a dog we’d take for a walk once a day then forget about. It’s devastated the whole family.”

Have you ever gone all-out trying to find your dog? Let us know in the comments.

Via the Telegraph