We had a call today about a dog in a Camarillo animal shelter that match some of Willie’s description. The dog in the Camarillo shelter had a lot more tan coloring than willie and looked younger and had a longer shaped face and snout. The dog apparently has been microchipped but the owner did not register his microchip. So, he is at the shelter waiting to be reunited with his family or adopted by another family. It is not Willie.

I am so thankful to the woman who called in an effort to help reunite us with WIllie. Calls like her’s is a remnider that there are more people out there helping us than we even know.
Unfortunately she too is missing her white Poodle. They too are going through the anguish of not knowing the whereabouts of their little dog and family member. She said that they posted 400 signs in hopes that someone would lead them to their poodle. However, they are not having any luck. She talked about adopting the yorkie at the Camarillo shelter if it was not Willie.
Everyday with out Willie is painful for our family. Our oldest daughter talks about him almost everyday and misses him and the walks that she used to take him on.
This is still causing so much pain and yet we still have so much hope.

Thank you to all of you that are helping us to bring Willie home.

- Willie’s Mom

A recent story about five yorkies that were stolen at gunpoint and recovered in Los Angeles has made national headlines.

While there is so much attention to the topic we are hoping that someone will pick up on Willie’s story. We put together an initial press release, but it’s a bit rough. If anyone has any ideas on how to make it a bit more interesting or catch the attention of the press please drop us a line.

First I want to thank so many people who have helped to spread the word or written us with word of encouragement. It really keeps us going. It also helps to offset others who seem to have nothing better to do than to make a hard situation harder.

Occasionally we receive a ransom call with instructions that are so incomplete that we couldn’t act on them even if we did believe them. One person called and said that they were going to cut off Willie’s legs if we didn’t give them some money and then never called back with the details. Another one left a strange voice-mail in which he makes a barking noise imitating a dog in the background. He then demands money if we ever want to see Willie again, but he seems a bit crazy and isn’t clear on where to meet.

Then we have had unidentified callers fish for more details. Since they can potentially feed this information to would be con-artists, we have to handle situations like this carefully. I expect to be approached by more con-artists as the word spreads. Unfortunately this means that I may have to ask others to jump thru some hoops before I can take them seriously.

So, please keep the supportive email coming!

I recently recieved an email from a kind person asking how they could help out. After getting back to them it occurred to me that others may want to know what they can do.

Right now I am looking for low cost ways to reach a good percentage of people in the Pasadena area. There are about 150k people in Pasadena, maybe as many as 500k in the area that we would like to cover. If we had to narrow the focus, we believe that Willie is still with his abductor in a lower socio-economic neighborhood of the Pasadena area.

I would like to get down to about $.01 per person reached. I have a number of ideas in mind.

1. Direct email campaign – I need to source local email addresses.

2. TV advertising – Using Spotrunner I believe that I can run about 100, 30-second cable spots over the greater Pasadena area for about $1500. I need to understand the effective reach per spot. If this turns out to be an inexpensive option I would also need to produce a TV quality advertisement similar to the one that onawhimproductions put together for us.

3. Fax campaign – We faxed all the vets in the area about a two months ago, but I would like to try to fax as many local numbers as possible. Once again starting with the vets, businesses, pet clubs. This may also overlap with a PR effort (below).

4. PR – We were able to get one article in to a local paper early on. Maybe we could try again. I would like to consider radio and TV too. Public stations might be an option.

5. Direct phone campaign – I would need to source local phone numbers from the voter registry. I would have to set up a system to call every phone number in/around Pasadena with an automated message from my wife saying something like this: “Hi my name is ******. I live in Pasadena. My Yorkie was stolen two months ago. If you have seen anyone in the neighborhood who recently adopted an older male Yorkshire terrier please call me back at 310-490-3901 or leave a message on our website www.williewatch.com.”

If you think you can help out with any of these or if you have any other way to contribute we would be very grateful.

Tonight we got a call from a girl who found a male Yorkie wandering Huntington Blvd. about two weeks ago. She saw our poster at the Alhambra Petco and our ad in the San Gabriel Star. Then she checked out williewatch.com and decided that it might be Willie. She was a bit reluctant to let him go, but eventually she decided it was the right thing to do.

We were so nervous. What if Willie had changed? What if he was abused and didn’t act the same? Would we know it was him?

When she arrived with her family we were so hopeful that this might be it. The end of the sadness. The end of the hours of searching. The return to normalcy. He looked so much like him, but as much as we wanted it to be him we both glanced at each other and new it wasn’t Willie.

We were so greatful that they went so far out of their way to attempt to reunite their Yorkie with his owner. So hopeful that maybe Willie is with an equally loving and thoughtful family. We were sad to see them go.

So there is another Yorkie trying to find his way home. If anyone is missing a Yorkie that resembles Willie please get in touch with us.