Cafe hit by doggone thief in the night

An Arrowtown cafe was left in short supply of its bread after a dog with a penchant for paninis, French sticks, doughnuts and bagels made away with $60 worth of stock.

Bread was delivered to Arrowtown's Espresso Love cafe at the earlier time of 3am last Saturday and left in an outside area.

Cafe owner Jacynda Wallace said she arrived at the cafe to find nearly all of the bread destined for the day's customers gone.

The theft was reported at 9am and Ms Wallace expected police to be looking for a two-legged culprit.

Arrowtown's CCTV system was used to identify who had stolen the bread and after scouring the surveillance, Arrowtown community senior constable Beth Fookes discovered the offender was a black Labrador.

The CCTV footage showed the dog making return trips down the alley to the cafe and returning with a mouthful of bread, which occurred until the owner's arrival at 7.30am.

The dog stole around 40 items of bread and Snr Const Fookes described what she had seen as ''a dog on a mission''.

Ms Wallace said she was relieved to hear the thief was a dog and there was not an offender lurking around Arrowtown.

At the time of writing the dog had not been found.

Snr Const Fookes said supposedly they were looking for a now rather large dog, but there was a possibility the dog stored the bread to consume later.

She suggested anyone knowing the identity of the dog to let either Queenstown police or Espresso Love know.