You can hear in Kolinio Beitaki's voice how much he adores his dogs.
He gets the giggles talking about how they come running to find him in the house and the way his wife plays with them.
"I always wake up in the morning and start calling them. If I'm in the house they'll come and lay down around me," Mr Beitaki told the ABC's Pacific Beat program.
"And my wife teases them, chasing and playing with them around the house."
WARNING: This story contains content that readers may find distressing.
Mr Beitaki's family has taken in five stray dogs that had been abused or malnourished over the past three years.
They brought Kevin, Burrito, Pet, Bruno and Kabu back to good health and gave them a happy home.
"Kabu is our only female dog. She came to our home with so many scars on her body after somebody poured hot water on these female dogs," he said.
"So I looked after her."
But one day last month, Mr Beitaki was startled to see a Facebook post showing dogs chained up in a compound near his community in Fiji's city of Lautoka.
He realised some of the dogs were his own.
"I stood up and started calling them but only the female dog was here and all the male dogs were gone," Mr Beitaki said.
Naomi Nacagilevu lives in the same community and witnessed the pets being captured.
She was alerted by barking dogs and was devastated by what she saw.
"One of the dogs was tied up with a rope and another was tied up with an electric wire," Ms Nacagilevu said.
"It was so tight around the neck and around the stomach, it was really heartbreaking.
"I cried and I begged them to release the dogs, but it seems like these people don't care."
Children recruited for dognapping
Mohammad Khan from the Greater Good Foundation — a community group that runs its own dog shelter — said dognapping was a common problem in rural areas of western Fiji.
Many are sent to Fiji's interior and subjected to inhumane and cruel behaviour so they can be used to hunt wild pigs.
"If it's a healthy dog, if it's a good hunter, the ears are chopped off as a mark of a hunter dog," he said.
"The rest are left unattended. They are starved, some even starved to death. Even the ones with their ears chopped can be starved so that they have that hunter instinct."
Many of the dogs die on their first or second hunt when encountering the wild pigs.
This is why every few weeks more dogs go missing, Mr Khan said.
The pig hunters will even recruit children as young as 13 to carry out the dognappings, Mr Khan said.
"We have encountered these children going around in communities asking for female dogs which have not been sterilised," he said.
"These children are mostly given $5 or $10. For them, they don't know what actually happens to these animals."
Calls for tighter laws
Mr Beitaki was one of the lucky ones as his dogs were safely returned.
Ms Nacagilevu, who volunteers with the Greater Good Foundation, posted photos of the dogs to Facebook and her community quickly took action.
"I was very happy to get my dogs back. After seeing them chained up like that we got very upset," Mr Beitaki said.
"I thank them very much. Without that post, my dogs would be still missing today."
Animals Fiji founder Casey Quimby — whose shelter's head office is in the town of Nadi — has seen first hand what could have happened to Mr Beitaki's dogs if they ended up in the hands of pig hunters.
"What we have seen is some of the pig hunters doing some cruel things to dogs like chopping off ears or cutting off tails," she said.
"Those type of things are more common with the pig hunters."
She said the hunters believed that cutting ears helps the dogs hear better, "which is totally not scientifically based and false."
"And obviously with tails, less things that a pig could catch onto."
Fiji Police have acknowledged the issue in the past, launching investigations into acts of cruelty allegedly carried out by the pig hunters.
Fiji Ministry of Agriculture Permanent Secretary Vinesh Kumar said the authorities were aware of animal cruelty cases, but he insisted they were isolated events.
"It's not a problem that is all over Fiji," he said.
"Also, in certain cases, when dogs are taken from communities, it's not only for pig hunting.
"A number of times people just take them for the farms that are there to look after these farms."
Mr Kumar said pig hunting was culturally important to certain sectors of Fiji's society, but the government was monitoring the situation to ensure that all animals were treated humanely.
The Greater Good Foundation has received reports of theft from all across Fiji's western region and wants more action to be taken, including strengthening animal cruelty laws.
"The fines are only $50, then there's [a possible] six months imprisonment … We haven't seen any conviction or fines lately despite so many complaints," Mr Khan said.
In the meantime, the shelter, which operates solely on public donations, will keep raising awareness and educating people on how to treat animals.
"We will keep educating people. Since we have been educating people about what is actually happening to these animals, they are shocked," Mr Khan said.
