I love dogs. Goes without saying really seeing as I’ve written several books on the life I share with mine, as well as maintaining this website, my social media accounts, and starting a dog charity so yes, it’s more than obvious that I love dogs.
It can be impossibly hard nowadays to know how to advise anyone looking to source a dog to share their lives with. The puppy market is a nightmare to navigate. It’s hard to know you are not supporting puppy farming. The rescue world also has problems, as the lines increasingly blur between selling dogs and genuinely rehoming them. As rescue in the UK is largely unregulated and not legally defined, unscrupulous parties on both sides – retail and rescue – can look very much alike.
Places online to do some research:
Pet Advertising Advisory Group
My view on the Kennel Club – Buyer Be VERY Aware
Back in olden times when I was naive and less knowledgeable about the puppy trade, I used to direct people to the Kennel Club, in the UK. It was a long, long time ago. People believe, although the Kennel Club make no claims to this, that their registration scheme is a mark of quality. Until recently it ran 2 schemes, one known as the Assured Breeder Scheme did make all kinds of claims. In short, the KC benefit from a system they run that’s opaque, confusing and rife with welfare issues. A system which brings in a lot of money to what is, a private club.
It’s well known that puppy farmers register puppies with the Kennel Club and advertise litters as ‘KC Registered’. This is legal. It misleads the buying public. Albert Claude’s breeder, Eric Hale, exposed in a TV documentary in 2016 for his practises, registered puppies with the KC.
READ THIS EXCELLENT PIECE FOR MORE BACKGROUND
What to do when visiting a breeder or seller of any dog
If you manage to find your way through the minefield and find a litter of puppies, make sure you visit the home environment. Never, ever allow a puppy to be brought to you, or meet anywhere other than the breeders home.
If the puppy’s not in a home, personally I wouldn’t be buying. But perfectly ‘reputable’, licensed breeders do operate from kennel environments. You will need to make up your mind if that is acceptable. Those breeders are in business, they’re licensed, inspected and meet animal welfare standards and are not the same as puppy farmers who don’t. But, the puppies and parent dogs are not raised in normal home environments; they live in kennels. This is not my ideal and not something I would venture near. Dogs have a need for human love and company, it’s as essential to them as air and water.
So, visiting the breeder, looking at the litter, take a good, critical look at the home environment. See the puppies interacting healthily with each other but most importantly with their mum. If you’re in the presence of a puppy dealer trying to dupe you, they may well have wised up on the “where’s mum” question and have an adult dog around to satisfy you. But, this may not be the mother, or if it is, she may have been brought indoors from the shed out in the garden.
Take a look out the back and see if there are kennels or sheds which may be housing other dogs or puppies. A decent breeder will keep the environment scrupulously clean, there should be no unpleasant smell from the puppies, no sawdust about, no signs of illness or sickliness in mother or puppies. Don’t listen to any excuses for mum not being there that day, being out with the sister, visiting the vet, etc etc, all these are reasons to walk away and report the dealer in whose presence you probably are.
Do not be tempted to buy a sick puppy because you feel sorry for it. However awful it is to walk away, this is what you must do, for if you take the puppy and hand over your cash, the misery continues and the demand continues. You create space for another puppy to be bought in and sold. But by walking away, doesn’t mean you are doing nothing, for if you come across this, report it.
Report to the local authority, Trading Standards and RSPCA, the local press, report to everyone you can. Be prepared to be bumped around from person to person, for the buck to be passed round, but keep reporting, keep following up. The more reports from the public that are received, the more action is likely to take place to stop the dealers, the puppy farmers, the abusers. We have to ALL make it harder for these people to make a living from the suffering they cause.
There are campaigners who have been battling away for years, reporting, documenting, filming and compiling evidence. The low welfare puppy trade continues because buyers keep buying badly, either through naivety, wilful ignorance, fraudulent sellers, or a combination of it all. It should not be hard to bring a dog into our lives and know we are not contributing to criminality, or causing parent dogs to live miserably. Sadly, all the time there is a lot of money to be made from puppies, it will continue to be hard to do the right thing. But not impossible.