Dogs are disappearing from Pender County. Are they being stolen?
On the day she disappeared, Dottie the spotted white pit bull mix was sunning herself in her big Pender County yard — a spoiled and beloved pet with no reason to run off.
Then David Eipp heard her barking from inside the house, and she didn’t come bounding back like usual even when he gave his special whistle. He heard her barking again, then no more.
After a year and a half, Eipp estimates driving 1,000 miles around Pender County in search of his dog, having posted signs at every intersection and passed them out to his letter carrier, the FedEx driver and the UPS truck.
Nothing.
“She was always with me,” he said Tuesday, still in mourning. “Twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t go anywhere without her. If you saw me, she was with me.”
Eipp and a group of worried Pender County pet owners now count roughly 30 dogs vanished since Dottie went missing, nearly all of them pit bull mixes within a 10-minute drive of Bugaw, many of them in fenced yards. Increasingly, they fear their animals have been stolen rather than lost.
$100,000 a fight
The Pender County Lost and Found Pets page on Facebook is filled with sad stories like Dottie’s, all involving an otherwise loyal and homebound pet gone in minutes without a clue.
They suspect the worst: a dog-fighting ring rounding up animals. Though they have no evidence, it has happened before.
A federal grand jury indicted 10 men in 2016 for fighting dogs across Eastern North Carolina, including in Pender County, sometimes at $100,000 a fight. Though dogs in those illegal fights had been purchased and bred, the victims around Burgaw now see the same motivation for collecting healthy pit bulls.
In 2024, sheriff’s deputies seized 25 dogs in Iredell County while breaking up a multistate dog-fighting ring. Police in Gaston County charged a 39-year-old man with 30 counts of dog fighting — one count for each animal found in cages.
“If somebody really wanted a pit bull,” said Sheba Shiver, whose pit mix Duke disappeared from her neighborhood in April after playing next door, “they could just go to the shelter.”
Even if the shelters offered a deep discount or free adoptions, a person with dark motives might still need to fill out paperwork. She can think of no other reason her dog Duke would permanently leave the neighborhood one day before his birthday when she had only left for 10 minutes.
“It just seemed to me every week there was a dog missing and they looked kind of similar,” Shiver said. “I think there’s something fishy going on. I talk to people and they say things about the dog fighting but they don’t give specific information. I went and talked to the sheriff, and they basically said they need something specific to go on, something concrete. There wasn’t much they could do.”
The Pender County Sheriff’s Office has not yet responded to e-mailed questions.
A dark SUV
Melissa Williams actually saw her pit bull taken.
Her family had a Fourth of July party and Koda darted out when a child opened the door. As she pursued, Williams saw her dog get into what appeared to be a black SUV. It was too dark outside to collect any other identifying details.
The more she looked on the lost pets Facebook page, the more she found missing pit mixes: Koda, Dottie, Thor, Marlo, Duke, Lola, Bear, Yayo, Sissy, Willow, Fendi and others. She is now offering a $6,000 reward for Koda; a $5,000 reward is offered for Dottie; $500 for Thor; $400 for Marlo.
“These are not just missing pets,” she said in a news release. “They are loved family members. Children are crying themselves to sleep. Families are offering thousands of dollars in rewards just to bring them home. But our fear goes beyond theft. With so many dogs vanishing, many of us are beginning to suspect a more sinister reality.”
She has proposed an ordinance called “Koda’s Law” that would require microchipping at vets’ offices, groomers and shelters, and to keep a database that would help flag missing animals and notify police. It is starting to gain interest among county and state officials, she said.
“We feel our concerns are not being heard,” Williams said. “We need awareness. We need our community to know what’s happening. And we need help putting pressure on those in power to investigate before more dogs — and more families — suffer.”