A family are offering a $20,000 reward after their two dogs went missing from their Ōropi property.

Owner Amanda Hacche fears they may have been stolen.

Hacche said Cash and Chilli disappeared on Tuesday afternoon after they were briefly let outside at their Gluepot Rd home. The pair have not been seen since.

Cash, 5, and Chilli, 5 months old, are both purebred blue-and-white English Staffordshire bull terriers.

Both are microchipped, registered and insured.

Hacche said Cash can be identified by his grey muzzle, while Chilli has a white stripe running down her nose.

“We need these dogs home.

“These are not just dogs. They are genuine whānau. They’re like our children.”

Hacche said she had been recovering from the flu and had kept the dogs inside for most of the day before letting them out briefly at about 2pm.

She said neither dog had a history of wandering far from home.

“These are not dogs that go to every random neighbours’, they don’t go sniffing around random places.”

She believed the pair would have made their way to the front of the property before being grabbed.

The family have offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the dogs' safe return.

While she couldn’t say for certain that the dogs were stolen, their sudden disappearance was out of character, and their valuable nature may have made them a target.

“It feels like my dogs have been targeted, or people have opportunistically grabbed them and then gone, holy, we’ve hit the jackpot.”

Hacche said she was particularly worried about Chilli, fearing those who took the dogs may try to breed from her.

“Chilli is way too young to breed. If they try to breed from her now, it’ll kill her.”

She said the disappearance had taken a heavy emotional toll on her family, who have distributed more than 500 flyers around the community.

“Grief, deep, deep grief, feeling of powerlessness, feeling useless to try to find them. Feel like you’re grasping at straws all the time.

“All of us are not sleeping, not eating, struggling, just the whole family is falling to bits.”

Flyers have been distributed across the community as the family searches for Cash and Chilli.

Hacche’s mother, Robyn Hacche, said her daughter had been “hardly functioning” since the dogs went missing.

“It’s kind of like losing a kid.”

She said the breed was quite sought after and people often stopped them in public to admire the dogs.

“We took them over to the Mount one day, we went to the beach, everyone was stopping and saying, ‘Is the puppy for sale?‘”

Police said they received a report on Tuesday of two dogs that were possibly stolen from a property in Ōropi.

They are currently reviewing the information and making further inquiries into the incident.

Tauranga City Council regulatory and community services general manager Sarah Omundsen said one owner had checked the council pound, but the dogs were not there.

She said staff had printed flyers to help identify the dogs if they came into their care.

“We sincerely wish the owners the very best of luck in locating their dogs and having them safely returned home.”

The family are asking anyone with information on the dogs’ whereabouts to contact [email protected].

Zoe Blake is a multimedia journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and the Rotorua Daily Post.