A TERRIFIED pet owner has paid a £200 ransom to get her dog back after it was kidnapped by travellers.

Jeanette Collins' 11-month-old Yorkshire terrier Scubee disappeared when she set off to take her two children Melissa, nine, and Thomas, four, to school on November 13.

The dog escaped from the house and was spotted by a passer-by but a man with an Irish accent told him not to bother calling the telephone number on the dog tag as he would take the animal straight to Bexleyheath Police Station.

He then bundled the black and tan dog into the back of a white open-back van but it was never handed into police. Mrs Collins, from Bexleyheath, immediately put up missing posters appealing for information, and it was then she started to get strange and threatening phone calls from a man with an Irish accent.

She said: "He claimed to know people who had bought the dog, and told me he might be able to buy it and sell it to me.

"I was told to go to two places in Dartford before I finally met a traveller family at The Circus Tavern in Essex.

"There was a husband, wife, and two children, who turned up in a car. I gave them the £200 ransom money and they gave me my dog on November 20."

The Irish man had threatened Mrs Collins during her week-long ordeal, at one point telling her she would never see the dog again.

She added: "I'm frightened because he says he knows where we live."

Mrs Collins decided not to involve the police in the search for her dog.

A spokesman for Bexleyheath police said: "At this time we have some information regarding her dog and we will now speak to the victim."

In August a Sidcup woman paid travellers £500 for the return of her border collie which was stolen from the back of a van in Foots Cray.

November 26, 2001 14:49