‘Where’s Martha?’ A question that has plagued former YouTube couple Jim Chapman and Tanya Burr in the six years since their split.
The duo’s beloved sausage dog, Martha, disappeared in 2019, with neither influencer addressing the whereabouts of their pet despite fans’ barrage of curiosity.
The questioning became so all-consuming that Tanya, 36, even blocked the word ‘dog’ in her comments, which only added fuel to the fire.
Rather than everyone simply forgetting about the tiny pup, conspiracies popped up across the internet as fans continued to ask ‘Where is the hound?’
For the past six years, despite questions under almost every post made by Tanya or Jim, 37, the duo decided to keep quiet.
Thankfully, after years of speculation, Jim’s sister Nicola Chapman has confirmed that Martha is ‘absolutely alive’.
In a video captioned ‘Where’s the hound. Question answered’ on TikTok, the 44-year-old makeup artist finally spilled all.
‘I thought while I put my makeup on, I will quash a myth of the tale as old as time – Where is the hound?’ she began.
Nicola recalled asking her brother why he didn’t ‘just tell people’ what had happened to Martha when speculation first started.
Jim replied that ‘he would love to talk about but felt like because Tanya had never spoken about it that it wasn’t really his place to say anything.’
The author ‘didn’t want to bring up old stuff’ and thought the best way through was to ‘just let it be’.
Nicola revealed that she and her siblings get asked constantly about Martha, so she decided it was time to address the sausage dog-sized elephant in the room.
‘I think we all need to bear in mind that it was part of their life that was so public it probably hurts a little bit to talk about,’ she said.
With Jim’s permission, Nicola continued: ‘Jim had to move out [when they split] and moved into a flat that I had in London, which had no garden whatsoever.
‘Also, unfortunately, around the same time, Martha had a problem with her back. Sausage dogs can often have a vertebra that moves, I don’t know the ins and outs.
‘She could no longer go upstairs, and Tanya and Jim’s house had lots of stairs.’
The hound needed rehab for her back as well as 24-hour care, which the YouTubers could no longer provide due to their split.
‘I can understand why they probably wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it for a while, because it’s really sad,’ Nicola added.
Tanya and Jim were part of the huge Brit-pack YouTube era, which also included Zoella and Joe Sugg, exposing their lives freely on the internet.
Having met in 2007, they became engaged in 2012 and married in 2015 – the same year they adopted Martha – all with their loyal following watching on.
Their 2019 split came as a shock to fans, with the couple announcing their divorce via Instagram.
Tanya wrote: ‘Just wanted to let you all know that a few weeks ago Jim and I made the painful decision to no longer be together.
‘We have a huge amount of love and respect for each other and will continue to remain friends forever. Thank you in advance for respecting our privacy at this difficult time.’
Although initially they planned to share custody of Martha, she was given to a friend of the family, Hannah, who already had a sausage dog and lived on a farm in Norfolk.
Nicola laughed: ‘When I told my agents about this ages ago, I said “Oh she lives on a farm”. They went “You can’t say that she lives on a farm, that’s normally what they say when a dog is no longer alive!”
‘She’s absolutely alive, she lives on a farm. She is running around happily, living her best life.’
The fate of Martha-Moo was previously shared in a subreddit by Sam Chapman in 2022, where she insisted the pup was ‘not brown bread’.
Fans were unable to verify if the account was legitimate and took ‘living on a farm’ as a metaphor, so the reassurance was largely ignored.
Nicola concluded: ‘Hopefully Tanya won’t mind me doing this video because it just puts it all to bed and nobody needs to ask us anymore what happened to Martha-Moo. Case closed.’
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