On lost dogs and broken hearts

Ten  - maybe eleven, years after the birth of our first child, my husband and I finally gave up hoping that there would be a second and decided to just get a dog.
We heard about some people who were giving puppies away and we went to have a look.  There were only two puppies left.  Little mongrel doggies - mostly Jack Russell and Fox Terrier, but the owner wasn't quite sure what breed the mother was.  We took them both.

We called the girl "Anastacia" 

and the boy "Nikolai" 

- yes after the prince and princess ( my daughters have Russian names too).  Being long names it was shortened to Stacey and Kolya.
For two years they were our babies, and then we were surprised with a real baby.

That was five - very almost six years ago.

Recently we had to make a place for our teenager to park her little car, so we decided to lay down some paving, knock down a portion of the front wall and have a motor-gate installed.

The paving was laid, the wall was knocked down.  My husband paid a guy a huge deposit for making the gate.  That was four weeks ago.  We still have a hole in the wall, no gate and the guy has sold his business and disappeared - with our money.

Meanwhile we had been making all sorts of plans to keep the gap closed so that the dogs stay inside.  They found a way out.  They ran down the road and disappeared.

My dog babies are gone.  It has been almost a week.  No word at the vets in the area, none at the SPCA.  No response to posters put up.

They are gone.

Our hearts are broken....