Missing since July and Dh15,000 reward: Abu Dhabi family searching daily for Maltese dog Jiku

Dubai: Jiku went missing from Al Mushrif on 3 July. His family, Priyanka Tamang from Kalimpong, in India, has been out looking for him almost every day since.

The two-year-old Maltese disappeared two days after they moved into a new home near Mushrif Mall. Nine weeks on, the search has grown from two people walking their own street into a WhatsApp volunteer group, a flyer campaign across several neighbourhoods, and a Dh15,000 reward with no questions attached.

There have been dozens of sightings since then but haven't taken the search forward much.

The family had never changed homes since taking Jiku in. He was adopted, so by the time the boxes came out on 1 July he had already been through one upheaval.

He did not handle the second well. His owner remembers the whining, because he almost never did it. Each time a door opened he tried to step outside and look, and each time somebody stopped him.

And Jiku also hides. He wedges himself into corners and ignores his name until somebody produces a treat. So when nobody had seen him for fifteen minutes on 3 July, the assumption was the obvious one.

Outside, then the search stayed close to the house for nearly two days. Because on walks in the heat, Jiku usually managed a short distance before sitting down to be carried.

But then a man said he had seen a small white dog crossing the main road.

From mid-July, residents around Mushrif Co-op and the park began recognising his photograph. They had seen him. Several assumed he was a stray. Almost none had called anybody, because almost no one knew a family was looking.

By the time each witness was traced, the sighting was days old.

At 12.40am on 22 July, a message placed a matching dog in another block, near a school. It was where the family lived before the move. They drove over immediately and found nothing.

Since then, the stretch between Al Nada Girls' School and International Community School has been the search's main focus. The family cannot stop wondering whether Jiku was walking back to the home he remembered.

Once volunteers joined and the neighbourhood was divided up, leads multiplied. On one day the family received eight.

A witness saw a small white dog near the ADNOC station at around 10am, being carried by a man. Others recalled the same scene, describing him as calm and neatly dressed, some remembering glasses.

He was not hurrying away. He was stopping passers-by and asking whose dog it was.

Nobody knew, and the posters had not reached that street yet. Shown photographs afterwards, witnesses said they believed the dog was Jiku. Weeks of flyering have not identified the man.

Jiku is microchipped. His family says they have had no confirmation of him being scanned anywhere.

The reward began at Dh5,000 and was tripled after a Dubai company, Gulf Invest, saw one of Jiku's Instagram posts.

The same number also brings prank calls. Some demand the money be transferred before handing him over. Others call to say he is dead. The family answers every unknown number regardless.

Help has come from outside the emirate too. A friend, Gill, drives down from Dubai to join the searches.

They are now working through veterinary clinics across all seven emirates, on the chance that whoever has him eventually takes him in.

Jiku is a two-year-old white male Maltese, microchipped, missing from Al Mushrif since 3 July. The reward for his safe return is Dh15,000, no questions asked. Anyone with information can contact his family on +971 55 570 3025.