Owner Reunited With Toy Poodle Service Dog After Celebrity-Driven Social Media Search

NCIS star Pauley Perrette offered $5,000 to anyone who would help find her friend Arthur Renowitzky's service dog.

"Love" has been found. The tiny apricot-colored toy poodle was reunited with her owner Thursday after she disappeared the night before during an outing at the San Leandro Marina. The missing dog prompted a social-media driven search by the likes of NCIS star Pauley Perrette.

On Thursday afternoon, Love's owners received a tip that she might have been sold to someone at a Walmart parking lot in Oakland. Love, a service dog, was reunited with her owner, Arthur Renowitzky, thanks to Oakland-resident Daymond Dixon.

"I feel relieved knowing he got his dog back," Dixon said.

Dixon said he purchased the dog for $375 Wednesday night for his aunt, who recently lost her dog when a car ran over the pet.

Perrette was offering $5,000 to anyone who would help find her friend Renowitzky's dog. A civil rights activist and motivational speaker,  Renowitzky runs the non-profit Life Goes On Foundation.

Six years ago, Renowitzky was the victim of an armed robbery outside a club in San Francisco, which shattered his spine and left him paralyzed chest down at the young age of 20. Renowitzky and Love have been together since then.

"She's been with me throughout everything. She goes to all speeches and to hospital to visit patients with spinal cord injuries ... She cheers up patients," Renowitzky said earlier Thursday. "She means the world to me I really need to get her back."

Renowitzky said that he went to exercise at the San Leandro Marina and parked in the handicap spot around 8 p.m.

"I got in the wheelchair and took my eyes off her for a second and she was gone," he said.

After Perrette -- who plays Abby Sciuto on the television series NCIS -- found out about Renowitzky's ordeal, she started tweeting to get the word out about Love.

Pauley Perrette and "Love" the dog seen in this photo provided by the Perrette Family.

"He really needs his dog back," Perrette said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where she lives.

Perrette met Renowitzky in Los Angeles a year ago, when he was speaking at a children's event. Someone ran over his wheelchair, and Perrette bought him a new wheelchair after she found out about it on the news. They have been friends since then.

"First he gets shot, then he gets run over by an unknown guy, and now this," she said. "Love never leaves his side - she's glued to him, somebody must have grabbed her."

Perrette said that Love, albeit only 5 pounds, would protect Renowitzky at all times.

"I am not going to stop," she said. "We will get her back."

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