Matthew Freud still searching after £2,000 dog mysteriously disappears

PR magnate Matthew Freud’s dog, which went missing more than a week ago, has still not been found.

The publicity guru has offered a £5,000 reward for the safe return of Vincent, who went missing in the Italian fountains area of Hyde Park on Thursday, May 25, and a missing poster for the beloved hound trended on Twitter after it was shared more than 2,000 times.

However it has all, as yet, been to no avail.

Mr Freud’s ex-wife Caroline Hutton was still searching for the fox-red labrador on Saturday morning as she told the Standard she'd been losing sleep.

“It’s absolutely heart-wrenching, and it’s so hard not knowing,” she said.

Ms Hutton was out on a run with the £2,000 pedigree dog and was just about to leave the park when he disappeared in “literally seconds”.

“He was there one minute and gone the next,” she said.

The suddenness of his disappearance raised fears Vincent did not simply wander off, but could have been stolen.

“It’s what it does to the people who they’ve stolen from,” said Ms Hutton of the impact of dognapping. “There are children who are affected – the ripples go far.”

Social media users and the website doglost.co.uk have been helpful, she said, and she continues to attend sightings by kind-hearted members of the public. The dog is microchipped.

Nearly 5,000 cases of dog theft were reported to police in England and Wales between 2013 and 2015.

Nik Oakley, from doglost.co.uk, told the Times that these account for only a fraction of the problem since police seldom treat it as a criminal offence.

The website holds data on nearly 120,000 dogs that have been lost since 2003, and estimates that about 250 dogs are stolen every month.

"Dog theft has increased 24 per cent in the last three years," she was quoted by the Times as saying.