PORTLAND -- Ryan Whitledge and his wife, Lori, work all the time so they decided to get a friend for their beloved dog, Pepper, who tended to get lonely without the couple around.

Enter Meeko, an adorable Pomeranian puppy who, like most young dogs is rambunctious and adventuresome.

“My wife saw her and just fell in love with her,” Ryan said.

Earlier this month, Ryan woke up and did what he always does -- he made a pot of coffee and let out the dogs. But this time only Pepper returned. Meeko was gone.

She had dug out of the backyard, under the fence.

At first, Ryan wasn’t concerned, since it had happened before. Meeko would just come around to the front porch. But this time was different.

“After an hour, I started freaking out. She’s so little and so young and it was cold and rainy,” he said.

Lori was a mess, especially as minutes turned to hours and hours turned to days.

“I had lost hope that we were ever going to find her again,” Ryan said.  He put ads on Craigslist and Petfinder.com in attempts to locate Meeko.

After he’d posted ads around the Internet he received an e-mail saying that Meeko had been kidnapped.

The e-mail read: “I’m the one who stole your pet. So you need not look for your pet. Alls I’m demanding is $1,000. If you can’t give it that means you want your pet dead.”

 Background: Read the pet extortion e-mail

“It’s a shock that there are people out there who would do that,” Ryan said. 

Ryan knew right away it was a scam. But he believes that some pet owners desperate to find their loved ones would have fallen for it.

“I mean, I could have been an elderly woman who lost her only companion,” he said.

Portland police detective Scott Pitton sees scams on Craigslist all the time.

“There’s always a lot more scams whenever there are economic issues going on in our society,” he said, and warns people they should never, ever give someone money after a threat. 

Pitton also warns consumers never to wire money off of sites like Craigslist or Petfinder.com

So did Ryan ever get his Pomeranian back?

The phone rang.

“The person on the phone told me that they had found my dog,”  Ryan said.  He was skeptical, especially when they said he was located in Delta Park, across the river from the Whitledges Vancouver home.

But it was Meeko.

“We were so excited -- my wife slept with her that night, she wouldn’t let her go,” he said.

Ryan says he has no empathy for the crooks who would stoop so low to send an e-mail to a desperate pet owner.

“It’s a shock that someone would prey on someone who had lost a dog,” he said.