Mumbai, May 10 (Mid-day): A man’s love for his pet led him to relentlessly search for the 13-month old Havanese, till the two were finally
reunited.

On May 4, Captain Dhaval Bhatt, who is a resident of Indian Gymkhana area in Matunga (E), had gone to his farmhouse in Shahapur on the Mumbai Nashik Highway. On his return, he found that his  dog Romeo had gone missing. 

“The house help took the dog to the terrace of the building, from where Romeo ran into the roads, after which he went missing,” said Captain Bhatt.

Bhatt immediately approached the Matunga police and registered a missing complaint. Seeing that the police were doing little to find his beloved dog, he made around 200 posters of Romeo and started sticking them in the narrow lanes of Matunga and Sion, outside societies and on roads.

“I searched most of the areas near my building in Matunga and Sion, and also stuck posters which had my mobile number and the dog’s pictures,” said Bhatt, who is a helicopter pilot. A dog lover, he has 12 canines in his farmhouse in Shahapur.
Receiving information that the dog had last been seen near Sion Hospital at the bus stand, Bhatt started sticking more posters in the area.

On May 7, Bhatt got a WhatsApp message from a girl who identified herself as Nayonika. She informed him that she had seen the dog with a slum-dweller near the Jain Society. “I rushed to the area and found the dog was with a local youth, who wasn’t ready to hand Romeo over to me. I told him that I had lodged a complaint with the Matunga police. Afraid of being caught, he handed me the dog,” said Bhatt.

Bhatt signed off, “I have two Rottweilers, a Labrador, a family of 4 Havanese, a Berger, a pug, a mongrel, a lurcher and a Yorkshire. But Romeo, the dog that went missing, was my favourite. That’s why he stays with me in my home in Mumbai while others are in my farmhouse.”