UPDATE, 1 p.m. April 23:
Middletown Police told this new outlet Friday they are not investigating a dog fighting ring in the city.
Major Mark Hoffman said that while they do receive occasional reports of stolen dogs, they have not seen an uptick in the number of reports
He said he too has seen the dog fighting ring rumors on social media and believes they started with the missing Thor.
Butler County Deputy Dog Warden Supervisor Kurt Merbs said county officers have checked out a couple addresses where they received tips that dog fighting was happening.
“It was all false, fake,” Merbs said. “We didn’t even find any dogs at all.”
There are a lot of people posting things on social media, “but we are not getting a lot of real information,” Merbs said.
“At this time we are not investigating it actively as a valid call,” Merbs said. “We are following up on any leads we get, but so far they have been false.”
Merbs said he did recently dig up a site based on a tip that it was the missing husky.
“It was 100 percent coyote that I dug up,” Merbs said.
Mason Police Sgt. Craig Kline said a similar post was placed on a Mason/Deerfield Twp. social media site and people have “panicked”
“We have not taken any stolen dog reports in the city,” Kline said. Likewise, they are not investigating any reports of dog fighting
West Chester Police Officer Michelle Berling said no dog fighting or theft investigations are underway in their area either.
“We haven’t had any stolen dogs in over a year,” she said. “We had two over a year ago, but one was domestic related.”
ORIGINAL REPORT, April 22:
A missing dog has started a social media frenzy about a potential dog fighting ring in the area.
Efforts to find the missing pooch may have taken the story too far.
A Middletown couple getting married in a week aren’t planning the final details of their wedding. Instead, the focus is on finding their missing husky named Thor. He has a distinctive face, his eyebrows are little circles.
“Typically he comes home, but he didn’t come home that night,” said Jordan King.
Thor, a 3-year-old Siberian husky disappeared March 31. Now, more than 5,000 people on Facebook have joined in the hunt. Recently, the couple heard there may be something sinister behind Thor’s disappearance besides him just wandering off.
“It’s just really weird that no one has spotted him yet,” said King, who has turned to social media sites such as the Butler County Pet Finder page on Facebook to help find her missing dog.
The couple was told there was a dog-fighting ring in the Middletown area, stealing huskies and malamutes to use as bait dogs. The thieves mark potential targets with black trash bags on fences, then come back later to steal the animal.
“You always think it could happen. There could be someone out there doing that,” King said.
The director of the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center said he, too has heard the same story. But he said it’s an online hoax — one that’s been around for a while. Middletown police say there’s been no increase in dogs reported missing, and they’re currently not investigating any dog-fighting rings.
Meanwhile, King and her fiance just want one wedding gift: to get their beloved pet back.