Vigilante animal lovers are stealing pet dogs out of Lower Mainland yards, leaving broken-hearted owners in their wake.

But the founder of a dog-rescue group denies that her organization steals dogs reported to be mistreated.

"I defy that you have any proof that we've taken any of the dogs," says Janet Olson, an Air Canada pilot who opened A Better Life Dog Rescue in 2006.

Some of the stolen dogs have been returned to their owners. Others, such as an Airedale named Hunter, are still missing, their owners still searching for them.

"How do you explain to your child that your dog has been stolen?" says Kim Freeman, whose six-year-old son had nightmares for months after Hunter was taken from their Surrey yard.

Olson says her group has in some cases unwittingly accepted dogs taken without the owner's consent.

"We get a lot of [dogs] brought to us that people say they have found or were abandoned, and sometimes that's not the case -- they're neighbours who are upset about the conditions that the dogs are kept in, so they bring them to us," Olson says.

In Hunter's case, Freeman believes a photo posted by A Better Life was her dog. But Olson says that photo is a different dog that has now been adopted out to a good home.

Since 2006, A Better Life has rescued nearly 500 dogs -- including dozens slated for euthanasia -- had them treated by vets and found them homes, Olson says.

The group once spent $10,000 on a double hip replacement for a rescued dog, she says.

Two ex-directors of the group were arrested last year and charged with breaking into a Surrey garage where a dog was kept.

RCMP caught former director Rita Mashinsky in a car near the scene, where police found a blood-smeared hammer and blood around the frame of a smashed window.

Mashinsky had multiple cuts on her hands, visible through the gloves she was wearing, says Surrey RCMP Sgt. Roger Morrow.

She pleaded guilty to break-and-enter with intent to commit theft and was sentenced in May to a day in jail and two years' probation. Mashinsky's co-accused, Keira Blunden, another former A Better Life director, had her break-and-enter charge stayed.

A charge of pointing a firearm laid against Mashinsky was stayed as well. Morrow says that charge related to an "airsoft" gun -- a type of weapon that looks like a gun, fires plastic pellets and is considered a firearm under the law.

Olson says Mashinsky "did a very stupid thing" after failing to convince the dog's owners to sell it: She convinced Blunden to help her, but did not tell others in the group what she was planning, Olson says.

A Better Life's website contains a "Report a Dog" section asking for the exact location of a mistreated dog and the nature of the abuse.

When A Better Life receives a report, its officials contact the SPCA or try to get the owner to surrender the dog, often paying the owner as much as $500, Olson says.

n On Feb. 4, Brenda Campbell left her 10-year-old golden retriever Palooka in her fenced Surrey yard while she went to work at the Surrey school board for an hour and a half. When she returned home, the dog was gone.

Before the theft, neighbours had been feeding Palooka over the fence, Campbell says. After the Campbells put Palooka on a diet at their vet's recommendation, they asked the neighbours to stop giving her food.

"She was 90 pounds and they kept feeding her," Campbell says. "[They] were saying, 'She's too thin. She's hungry. We need to feed her.'" Following Palooka's disappearance, Campbell spent days calling veterinary hospitals, animal shelters and rescue groups, and putting inquiries on the Internet.

One response mentioned A Better Life. Campbell had already contacted the group while searching for news of Palooka, she says.

"They said, 'We're so sorry, we don't know anything about a golden retriever that was stolen,'" she says.

A shelter operator in Chilliwack heard of a golden retriever adoption, and contacted Campbell. The adoptive owner agreed to send a photo of the dog to the shelter operator, who sent it to Campbell. It was Palooka.

"I called my husband at work. I was crying," Campbell recalls.

They arranged to pick up the dog, and the adoptive owners were fully co-operative, Campbell says. They told the Campbells that A Better Life sold them the dog for $250, saying it came from an Asian couple in which the wife had died and the husband was going into a nursing home.

Campbell says her family always took good care of Palooka, and walked her frequently: "She's grown up with kids. She's a family dog." Olson says someone had brought Palooka to A Better Life "under false pretenses." A woman had called to say her neighbours were splitting up and couldn't keep their golden retriever, so they surrendered it to the woman to find it a home, Olson says. Olson says she met the woman in front of a Richmond pet store and received the dog.

She says she had paid $300 to have the dog's teeth cleaned, even after she found out Palooka was being returned to its owners. "Her teeth were very, very bad," Olson says. "With a dog with teeth as bad as hers, she can easily develop heart disease." n On May 5, Baljinder Khara left home for an hour and returned to discover her two-year-old German shepherd, Roxy, had disappeared from her large Surrey yard.

The gate was open and the 15-metre tether that secured Roxy to the fence was lying on the ground with Roxy's collar. Khara hasn't seen the dog since.

"I went to many [veterinary] hospitals everywhere, every day," Khara says, beginning to cry. "We really, really want her. It's just like a kid." The theft followed a complaint by a neighbour upset that the dog was tethered, Khara says. Khara says she was keeping Roxy in the yard for six weeks while doing renovations.

"She [could] go around everywhere," Khara says.

Through investigation, she found that a picture of Roxy had been posted on a dog adoption website but removed a day later, she says.

Olson says the picture of the shepherd called Annie on the website was not Roxy.

n In February 2007, Brenda Neufeld of Langley and her veterinarian husband went out in the morning to the fenced 13-by-18-metre pen in their yard to see their golden retriever Cheyenne.

Inside the pen was a walled, roofed kennel. Cheyenne would spend most days in the company of dogs brought for veterinary care, Neufeld says.

That morning, Cheyenne was gone.

Her husband began contacting everyone he knew in the dog-care world, and someone said they'd seen a video of Cheyenne posted on the Internet, taken by Linda Sleith, another former director of A Better Life. Neufeld and her husband watched the video.

She and her two daughters went to Sleith's house in Surrey. Sleith told them a man had brought her the dog, Neufeld says. Sleith showed them around a bit, then called the police, Neufeld says.

In a phone interview Thursday, Sleith said she was asked to shoot the video, but she wouldn't say by whom. She said she sent the video to rescue groups, trying to identify the dog.

"If I had stolen the dog, do you think I would've sent that?" she said.

Olson acknowledges that A Better Life took the video of Cheyenne. Olson at first said a woman had found the dog as a stray, but then said the woman had wanted the video taken as evidence of abuse.

"The woman who had her was outraged by her condition," Olson says. "She wanted to take [the video] to the SPCA." Taking the video was the only contact A Better Life had with the dog, Olson says.

Surrey RCMP looked for Cheyenne on Sleith's property but did not find her, says Cpl. Holly Marks of the Langley RCMP, which worked on the case because the theft occurred in Langley.

Sleith says she gave RCMP full access.

"I let the police search every single inch of my property, my house and my barn. No dog," she says.

Ultimately, queries to veterinarians by Neufeld's husband led to Cheyenne's recovery at a Burnaby vet, where it was being treated for gastroenteritis.

The dog had a tattoo that could have been used to unite it with Neufeld, she says.

"There really was no reason for her to be kept," Neufeld says.

ebaron@theprovince.com