Pet-loving sleuths hailed after tracking down stolen van with 12 dogs inside

A community of dog enthusiasts in Portland has been hailed after they tracked down a stolen van containing 12 dogs.

The van was stolen on Tuesday as Sunni Liston, the owner of the Coopers Dogpatch dog daycare business, unloaded a client’s dog.

Liston told the Washington Post she saw a man slip into the front seat of the van and speed away – she had left the keys in the ignition – as she handled the dog.

The thief had made away not only with the van, but also the phone, purse and the 12 dogs it contained.

“I was pretty panicked,” Liston, 60, said in an interview with the Post on Wednesday. Liston told the newspaper she suspected the man had intentionally stolen a van containing 12 dogs – including her own personal dog, Howard.

“The only thing that makes any sense to me, I truly believe that they were dognappers and they knew what they were doing and had seen me there before,” she said.

“My little guy in the front seat, I was scared to death about him. Each of the other 11 people [who had dogs in the van], that was their Howard.”

Coopers Dogpatch picks up dogs from owners in Portland, Liston said, and drives them to a daycare center outside the city, where the dogs have space to run free and frolic.

On Tuesday, the dogs had neither, as the van containing them sped away from the scene and through Portland.

Liston told the Post that a quick-thinking employee used an iPhone tracking app to locate her phone, which was inside the van.

The amateur sleuths were able to locate the van in a neighborhood Liston was familiar with – her friend lives there.

Liston called the friend, who reportedly “dropped everything” to search for the dog van. The friend eventually found it and pulled her car up behind it, preventing escape.

Police, who Liston had called from a bystander’s phone, soon arrived at the scene, only to find that the thief had fled. He had taken Liston’s purse and wallet, the Post reported, and several hundred dollars. But he had left the dogs.

“That 40 minutes was the longest 10 hours of my life,” Liston said.