A DEVASTATED dog owner has forked out more than £6,000 in the hunt for her beloved pet.

Angela Bruce, 42, has even hired a private detective during her six-month hunt for 11-year-old Pathos, but there is still no trace of the shiba inu, which looks like a miniature husky.

Miss Bruce spends about £800 a month advertising the missing dog in newspapers across Essex.

She also makes a 140-mile round trip to Essex every other week from her London home to look for the dog, and has spent hundreds of pounds printing 3,000 posters, which have been put up around the county.

Miss Bruce, who is a freelance charity worker, writes daily about her search on a Facebook page devoted to Pathos, and has more than 1,700 followers.

Breaking down in tears, she said: “You can’t put a value on your dog. I love him and I want him back.

“I realise at some point I’m going to have to stop, because it’s very expensive to keep going.

“But I always think if I advertise there’s just a slim chance someone will see him.”

Miss Bruce, who doesn’t have any other pets, added: “I recently hurt my back quite badly, and normally I wouldn’t have worked with an injury like this, but I’ve had to go back to work to be able to afford all the costs.

“I just can’t stop thinking about him.

“Every call I get, I wonder if someone will tell me they’ve found him.”

Miss Bruce said she had been through hell in the six months since Pathos went missing.

She added: “We’ve had prank and abusive phone calls to my mobile.

“The whole thing has been like being tortured slowly.

“I don’t know if he’s suffering. I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.”

Miss Bruce, of Highgate, North London, had been visiting her mum at her Pitsea home on Christmas Day when Pathos went missing from the back garden.

Since then, search days have been carried out in Pitsea and the wider Basildon area following a number of sightings.

Miss Bruce hired a private detective after a tip-off Pathos had been taken by someone in Basildon and given to a family in the Colchester or Clacton area, but the information amounted to nothing.

Mrs Bruce added: “If someone has got Pathos I would appeal to their conscience to give him back.

“I can’t understand why anyone would keep a dog when they know he belongs to someone else who loves him.”