US couple postpone wedding to search for missing pet dog

The love between a man and his dog knows no bounds, but how far would you go to save your best friend if he or she went missing?

One couple from San Jose in California are searching “to the ends of the Earth” and have postponed their wedding to allow them to focus on finding their beloved dog, Theo.

Trendee King and her fiancé James Galley have put up posters and fliers all around their local neighbourhood, offered a reward of $3,500 (£2,880), placed newspaper ads and even hired a pet detective in the hope of finding Theo.

The black and tan Brussels griffon, who’s just one year old, has been missing since February 13, when he ran out of the front door of his dog-sitter’s home.

King was celebrating having found a wedding dress when Galley called to tell her the worrying news. He “sounded very panicked,” King told the Mercury News, adding that “My heart sank and I was terrified.”

The couple have been searching high and low ever since Theo went missing, roaming the streets and calling for their little pooch every day for nearly a month.

“We’ve been everywhere. We’ve been to every shelter, every vet, every Petsmart,” King said.

What’s more, the couple decided to postpone their impending wedding to allow them to focus on finding Theo.

“There’s just no way I’m going to plan a wedding right now,” King said. “It’s impossible, it’s a full-time job [searching for Theo]. We go for 12 hours, 14 hours some days.”

King and Galley’s search has received a lot of support on social media - one Instagram user in particular helped spread the word when he shared a post about Theo with his six million followers.

And there have been occasions where someone’s thought they’d seen Theo, only for it to be a false alarm.

“I get hundreds of calls a day that ‘maybe this is your dog or maybe this is a sighting,’ so I have to go to make sure it’s not him,” King said.

“My phone rings off the hook all day long and it’s all false leads… It’s a lot of stress and crying.”

But the couple won’t stop searching.

“I won’t give up until he’s home,” King said. “Most of the time they’re close to where they were lost. I just think it’s persistence and getting as many eyes on it as possible. We have faith.”

Of course, the couple have received some criticism and mocking for the lengths they’ve gone to in the search for Theo, but any dog owner will be able to understand just how important a part of the family a dog is.

“People without dogs don’t get it, but people with dogs understand,” she added. “You’d go to the ends of the Earth. There’s nothing that you wouldn’t do because they’re family.”