• An Auckland woman claims she has been barked at, threatened and blackmailed by phone over several weeks. 
• She told the Herald the caller demanded $5000 for the safe return of her lost dog, Gracie. 
• Police said they are making enquiries and take all reports of this nature seriously. 

An Auckland woman already stressed by the loss of her beloved pet dog says she has suffered six weeks of harassment after posting flyers for the disappeared pooch. 

The woman — who wants to be known only by her first name, Nina - said the harassment began with callers barking at her, then escalated to threats of physical and sexual abuse against her dog, Gracie. 

“The barking calls were relentless, then finally they left the message, ‘I’ve got a gun ... if you don’t give me the money, I’ll shoot your dog’,” she told the Herald. 

Gracie escaped Nina’s home after being frightened by thunder and was last seen on August 31 in the Torbay area. 

Nina printed posters and distributed them in the area Gracie was last seen, never expecting her phone number could be used to torment her. 

“He’s just getting some sort of sick satisfaction... calling me again and again, six weeks of calling.” 

Nina said she also received a phone call from someone claiming to have found her dog, who agreed to meet her at a New World carpark. 

Auckland woman Nina said she has been repeatedly harassed since putting up posters of her lost dog Gracie, which included her phone number. Photo / Alex Burton 

“I was so happy that Gracie was coming home and when I pulled up it was a group of boys and they started barking at me. They didn’t have my dog... it was such a shock.” 

Nina pretended not to notice the boys barking, because she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of a confrontation. 

She said she tried to get CCTV footage of the incident from the supermarket – but the boys were standing out of camera range. . 

Nina told the Herald she provided police with multiple phone numbers and recordings of threatening messages and an officer twice dismissed the case as not serious. 

“She [said] I want you to understand this is going in the pile, but it’s going in the bottom of the pile [under] the real crimes that are committed, the serious crimes.” 

Nina could not understand how harassment and threats of blackmail and animal abuse were not a serious police matter. 

Police did not respond to Herald questions, but confirmed they were “in the early stages of making inquiries in relation to multiple hoax calls made to a person in relation to a missing animal”. 

“Police take all reports of this nature seriously,” the spokesperson said. 

Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.