Albert Claude and Angel
It’s blowing a gale here but no rain and not too chilly so I’ve just bolted around the lanes with Albert Claude and Angel. Leaving Nanou and Cerise at home keeping Michel company in the kitchen as he makes soup.
This photo I took an hour ago shows the size difference between Albert Claude and Angel.
Both came out of the exploitative dog breeding industry as mini schnauzers. In Angel’s case she was a breeding mother to many puppies. Nothing factual is known about her life but I can make an educated guess it wasn’t good. Her body still ripples with reflexive aversion to human touch if we give it without her seeking it. She doesn’t have the complex problems which burden Cerise but the industry did her no kindness.
Albert left Eric Hale’s Northern Irish puppy factory as an 8 week old puppy. It appeared in BBC Panorama’s ‘The Dog Factory’ it was so bad. He was sold weeks later for £650 in England, aged 5 months. Heaven knows how he managed during those missing weeks, a critical time in a puppy’s development.
His buyers gave him up the following day to a rescue as the older resident dog didn’t get on with him. I was told they wanted to hand over the older dog, keeping Albert. It is my good fortune that this did not happen. And I can only hope the older dog lived a well loved life.
The disposability of dogs in society is disgraceful and drives much of the suffering for millions of dogs.
I wonder, had they kept him, what those buyers would have made of their ‘mini’ schnauzer as he grew and grew…and grew some more.
