TWO dogs were stolen from a Whiteparish pub on Monday evening in what is the latest in a series of suspected pet thefts in the area.

Between 7.15pm and 8.20pm on Monday, November 23, two working gun dogs were taken from their kennels at the back of the Parish Lantern.

Landlord Paul Cooper, 56, said the dogs were still in their kennels at around 7.15pm, but just over an hour later he realised they were missing.

People staying in the campsite be- hind the pub later told Mr Cooper the side gate to the kennels had been open at 8pm, but Mr Cooper said no- body saw anything suspicious at the time.

He said: “At first I thought they’d got out, but they would have just mooched around the garden and gone back into the kennels. Then I started to panic that they’d been pinched.”

Mr Cooper has had Pinot (a black cocker spaniel) and Smudge (a liver and white spaniel), for about three and a half years and said he was “absolutely gutted” to discover them missing.

He said: “I’m a shooting man and I’m out all the time. That’s more or less my shooting season over now.”

Two dogs were also stolen from Amesbury on Monday, November 16, between 3pm and 4pm, when suspects broke in to a shed in the rear garden of a house on Burwood Close.

The dogs were a liver and white springer spaniel called Kelly and a chocolate Labrador called Pepper, both seven. Owner Andrew Parry, 36, said: “We’re all feeling numb.

My children miss the dogs greatly – we’ve had tears nearly every night since the dogs have gone”.

And Michelle Justin’s dog Nina, a black, tan and white Doberman X, went missing on from Hurdcott on October 16.

She reported Nina’s disappearance to the police on October 30. Police said they carried out enquiries, in- cluding watching CCTV footage, but could not find Nina.

Mrs Justin, 35, is still searching using social media, including the Facebook page “Finding Nina”.

“It’s been horrendous,” she said.

“You get up and you think about her and you go to bed and you think about her. The girls keep asking me if she’ll be back for Christmas and it’s so hard as a mum not to be able to answer that question.

“Nina is a member of our family.”