Chiko comes home: Purloined pup returned after robbery

After nearly three weeks of stress and fear, Chiko is finally home.

The little French bulldog was stolen from Rachelle Zacharias and Braden Fauchoux on March 17.

The couple immediately got to posting online everywhere they could in hopes of finding their pup.

The first time somebody claimed to have Chiko, they apparently lured the couple out to a parking lot in Martensville and then robbed the pair’s house on an acreage west of Saskatoon.

Despite all of that hardship, Chiko has finally been returned, 18 days later.

“(On Monday), we received a text message from another burner phone. It basically just told us the location of where he was. So I texted my sister and asked her to go take a look and see if he was actually there,” Zacharias said Tuesday.

“He was left at the Osler Town Hall in a crate.”

To make sure there wasn’t a repeat of the previous time, Zacharias had her sister pick up Chiko from the people working at the hall who were looking after him. Police stayed with Zacharias at her home in case the robbers returned.

It has been an ordeal, but Zacharias is incredibly happy to have the dog back … and Chiko’s happy to be home.

“He was super-excited … He was running around like crazy, just jumping all over the place. He’s a little chunkier than he used to be, so we’re going to have to put him on a diet after we spoil him,” she said with a giggle.

“I’m ecstatic. We’re both super-excited that we’re here. All three of us are just happy to be reunited.”

Thankfully, Chiko is healthy and happy. However, the weight gain isn’t the only thing that he has taken away from the ordeal.

“The first thing I did (Monday) was give him a bath, because they had tried to dye his fur to change the colour of him. So I tried to give him a bath, but the dye didn’t come out, so it’s just going to have to slowly wear off,” Zacharias said.

When the couple started telling Chiko’s story, it resonated with people.

Zacharias said that, across all the different online platforms, it had been shared more than 10,000 times.

“The support that we had on social media was amazing, and I think that’s what helped bring him home,” she said.