This is a really nasty story.

A lady in Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK (but she could live anywhere) advertised some Parson Jack Russell Terrier pups for sale. She arranged for a particular man to come round and view the litter.

The man duly arrived, played with the pups, and checked them over – during which process he inserted his fingers into their mouths “to check their teeth and jaws” – and then left, saying that he had other litters to view.

Shortly afterwards, all three pups became distressed.

Emma, the lady selling the pups, said: “They started to projectile vomit. They were screaming in pain, their tongues were hanging out and they were drooling. They were also paddling in distress.”

Emma immediately took the pups to her vet, but sadly two of them died.

Emma has since decided to keep the surviving pup (as would I).

This was a shocking, premeditated assault.

The person responsible has possibly (I’m inclined to think “probably”) done this before.

I wish I could be optimistic that the RSPCA (huh?) and the local police (huh? huh?) will now allocate sufficient resources to catch and prosecute this very sick individual. But sadly I doubt that he will be caught. He’ll carry on, unfettered. Undoubted bastard that he is.

Crimes against animals (that is – animals other than human animals) are generally considered (by the police) to be less deserving of attention as crimes against people.

But we all know that the one can lead to the other. And it invariably does.

So, even if some people (the authorities) don’t rate the life of an animal (ie not a  human animal) that highly, they must surely acknowledge that a puppy poisoner could some day pose a threat as (say) a hospital visitor, and poison some poor old lady or gent.

Why not? And what then?

I don’t prescribe to the “one day a puppy, next day a child” mantra in the sense that animals are the “proving ground” for future crimes against humanity.

From my point of view, a sick bastard is a sick bastard, regardless of whether he/she kills puppies or people.

Read more here http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Ely/Family-in-shock-after-three-pups-poisoned-23012012.htm

Pups poisoned by prospective purchaser

Saw this advert listed under “DOGS” in this week’s edition of my local paper, the Fenland Citizen:

GORGEOUS PUPPIES AVAILABLE NOW Westies, Cavaliers, Shitzus, Cockers (Blue Roan). Vet checked. First Vaccinations. Licenced Kennels. 01406 330120

There’s no indication of the seller’s name, so I searched for “01406330120″ on Google:

Very handsome Yorkshire Terrier puppy. We Have 1 Absolutely, In …
www.friday-ad.co.uk › … › Pets ads › Dogs & Puppies ›Yorkshire Terrier26 Aug 2011 – … Had His 1st Set Of Vaccinations Done With Vets Certificate. We Are Licenced Breeding Kennels. 01406330120. Price: £300. bargainsIco.png …

Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppies. We, In the UK …
www.friday-ad.co.uk › … › Dogs & Puppies › King Charles Spaniel14 Jul 2011 – They Are Very Friendly, Sweet Puppies And Should Make Wonderful Pets. We Are Licenced Breeding Kennels. 01406330120. Price: £400 …

West Highland Terrier pups ready soon. We Have A Beautiful, In the …
www.friday-ad.co.uk › … › Dogs & Puppies › West Highland Terrier14 Jul 2011 – The Males Are £450, The Females £500. We Are Licenced Breeding Kennels. 01406330120. Price: £450. bargainsIco.png. Flag as bargain …

Gorgeous Male Yorkshire Terrier Puppies. For Sale | Pets Market
www.petsmarket.co.uk/pet-details?petid=445926 Jul 2011 – … puppies come with pedigree, diet info. and vaccination certificate plus food to take home. We are Licenced Breeding Kennels. 01406330120 …

2 gorgeous male puppies still for sale :: Dogs and Puppies
archive.dogsandpuppies.co.uk/2_gorgeous_male_puppies…/7317201406330120. Category: West Highland Terrier. Registration details. This ad is no longer available, the latest ads for West Highland Terrier can be found below. …

Also listed, is a directory entry which gives the name of the kennel:

Windrush Lodge Kennels, Oxcroft Bank, Shepeau Stow, Whaplode …
m.118.com/a/7320/mapWindrush Lodge Kennels. Oxcroft Bank, Shepeau Stow, Whaplode Drove Spalding Lincolnshire PE12 0TY UK. 01406330120 · Download contact details (vCard) …

A search on Windrush Lodge Kennels turns up several entries, the first of which is this entry in a breeders’ directory.

Windrush Lodge Kennels – Breedersonline

“We are a family run kennels since 1987, we breed various breeds of dogs, all puppies sold are vet checked, have first innoculations done, wormed by vet and ourselves.We try to be as helpful as we can to purchasers of our puppies, providing diet info, care details and sample of food for puppies if required.We are appointment only. We have other breeds available occasionally. Border Terriers, Toy Poodles, Yorkshire Terriers.We have breeding and pet shop licences which have been held for very many years. We have own studs, all have wonderful temperments.”

Then I find a forum posting which strongly condemns not only Windrush Lodge Kennels but also a vet who (allegedly) is/was involved with them -

“Have you heard of ‘windrush lodge kennels’ just outside Holbeach? They advertise in most local papers. They are puppy farmers and dog dealers who buy whole litters off the Welsh, Scottish and Irish puppy farmers. Pengelly and Mizen were (not sure if they still are) the vets who would inspect the puppies, pass them as fit for sale, and vaccinate them. I am involved in rescue and have taken many dogs which originated from these kennels and the innoculation cards all bear the stamp of ‘pengelly and mizen’They make a nice living out of vaccinating the many hundreds of poor puppy farm bred pups which get sold through this kennels and probably other Peterborough based puppy farms too since not many vets want to be associated with the filthy trade.”

I can’t confirm these allegations – but nor do I have any reason to disbelieve them.

All I can say with any confidence is that puppy farmers sell multiple litters by placing multiple adverts. Enough said.

These sort of adverts appear every day, all over the UK (and many places worldwide) and the puppy farmers stay in business simply because people respond to the ads.

Puppy farms are miserable hell-holes where breeding bitches are kept in terrible conditions and used time and time again. The puppies they produce are often sickly and die horribly within a few days or weeks of being bought.

If you see an advert which arouses your suspicions, don’t respond to it. Move on. If everybody did the same, the puppy farmers would soon be out of business.

Puppy farm advert?

It’s an absolute disgrace that abandoned dogs in the UK are being put to sleep at an unprecedented rate while there are people desperate to give them a home.

What is the point in re-homing/rescue centres refusing an applicant on the grounds of (say) their being out at work for 7 hours a day, when the alternative is for the dog to be put to sleep. Dogs can cope with being left alone for a while.

OK, it’s not ideal, but this is not an ideal world, and it’s unrealistic to insist on an unachievable ideal when lives are at stake.

Why say no to a genuine applicant when to do so sentences a dog to death?

UK Must Rehome More Dogs in 2012

How aware are animals of their existence?

When we ask that question, we generally frame it in terms of how animals relate to their place in OUR world. We might look at a pheasant in a cage and ask “Does he know that when he’s freed from that cage he will be blasted out of the sky by shotgun pellets?” Of course he doesn’t. How could he know what some self-serving human intends to do to him. He has no more idea that he will be shot for some human’s amusement than does the human that he will accidentally shoot himself in the foot before the day is out. (Karma baby!).

Consider the behaviour of a pair of birds in Spring:

• they are driven to mate
• they are driven to build a nest
• they are driven to sit on their eggs until they hatch
• they are driven to feed their young until they are self-sufficient

Are these drives purely instinctive, triggered by seasonal, hormonal changes in the birds’ physiology? It would be difficult to argue that these reproductive processes of birds are anything but the result of primitive drives, which require no considered awareness. To further support this view, their behaviours are clearly synchronised with the seasonal development of plants and trees.

But what about behaviour which is not tied to seasonal changes? Let’s return to the pheasant, and instead of considering his failure to read highly specialised signals from his human captors, place him in the open countryside, and see how he interprets the intentions of an approaching fox. Any self-respecting pheasant will fly out of harm’s way at the first sight of a fox. Is this purely instinctive behaviour, the fight or flight response, fueled by adrenalin, or is the pheasant responding to an intelligent appraisal of the situation? Watch a pheasant foraging in the presence of wood pigeons, or rabbits, and you will see that, in certain company, it has no fear of being eaten. The pheasant knows the difference between a fox, a pigeon and a rabbit. Is it likely that the pheasant’s measured response is purely instinctive? I suggest that it is not.

I further suggest that, in the natural world, animals are very aware of their mortality. The fact that they cannot interpret the way human society operates should come as no surprise.

How would any of us humans fare if confronted by members of a superior alien intelligence, whose gestures, language and motivations were completely indecipherable to us? I suggest that the aliens might consider us to be very stupid indeed.

Many humans value animals’ lives as a lesser currency than human life – on ALL fronts, they deny animals an equal right to life. The generally held view is that animals are good to eat, their fur looks good on us, and they don’t count for much beyond what we can get from them.

This arrogant view has led to the extinction of species, inhumane farming methods and untold animal cruelty on a massive scale.

It’s time for humans to realise that animals are the same as us. They WANT to live. They FEEL pain. They ARE aware of their own mortality.

Humans don’t have dominion over animals any more than they have dominion over each other.

How aware are animals of their existence?

subject Animal cruelty legislation in China
The world-view of China, as a rapidly emerging super-power, is one of both wonderment and dismay.

People wonder at the dramatic rise in China’s prosperity and global economic influence.

But people also dismay at the Chinese government’s apparent lack of concern for the blatant cruelty being meted out to millions of its animals in the pursuit of that prosperity and influence.

Nobody can deny the horrific video evidence of dogs, cats and other defenceless animals being skinned alive at Chinese fur farms. Nobody can deny the evidence of the terrible treatment inflicted upon millions of sharks, who die slow, agonising deaths after their fins are taken to make soup. Nobody can deny the pain and suffering on a Moon Bear’s face as it spends years confined in a cage, with a pipe draining bile from its gall bladder.

These atrocities are but a small part of the cruelty inflicted upon animals in China, and on behalf of China.

China’s role as an effective world leader is seriously compromised while its cruelty to animals is not properly addressed.

When will the Chinese government legislate against animal cruelty, in line with other civilised nations of the world?

China is rapidly ascending to a unique position of influence. Please use that influence for the good of animals in your care, and thereby help save all animals, the world over, from barbaric cruelty at the hands of man.

Please do not waste this opportunity to make the world a better place.

email to the UK Chinese Embassy

China has no animal welfare legislation. Animal cruelty in China is rife. Read entries under “Animal Cruelty in China” for the horrifying extent of this abuse.

You can add your voice to hundreds of thousands of others by signing this petition to Stand By Animals in China

Stand By Animals In China

What motivates such a pathetic excuse for a human to hurl a defenceless puppy into the sea? What pleasure does that execrable piece of scum derive from watching the puppy struggle back to shore, only to show it no mercy, but instead hurl it once more into the cold, treacherous water.

chinese psychopath repeatedly hurls puppy into the sea

Look at the picture. Two smiling girls look on while a third captures the moment on her camera. Are any of these people in possession of a normal set of human emotions? Could they look any less like they are participating in the torture of a helpless, sentient creature? The girls couldn’t be less concerned if they were watching this lout tossing a piece of driftwood.

chinese man rescues puppy from a rock

Thankfully, the puppy managed to clamber to safety on a rock, where it was rescued by a man who was swimming nearby.

concerned chinese girl comforts rescued puppy

The puppy was then taken away by a concerned Chinese girl, who promised to care for it. The thug and his female companions left the beach before they could be apprehended. Not that they could have been charged with anything, even if they had been caught. China still has no animal cruelty legislation (except for that covering endangered species).

Clearly, dogs in China need all the help they can get.

You can add your voice to hundreds of thousands of others by signing this petition to Stand By Animals in China

Chinese Psychopath Repeatedly Hurls Puppy Into Sea

As much as time allowed, I attempted to keep up with the maelstrom of outrage on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

It saddens me that the “debate” was largely drowned under a welter of venom, directed towards the BBC, Jordan Shelly and anybody who dared voice an opinion which didn’t tow the party line. Joining in was akin to wading into a shoal of pirahnas.

There was a lot of congratulatory back-slapping when the FIX MY DOG slot was axed. Comments such as  “Oh my god…. WE MADE HISTORY!!!! ” appeared on a “Get Jordan Shelley Off The Telly” page. But I wasn’t whooping with joy. I felt a deep sense of regret that a wonderful opportunity – to educate and help dog owners – had been sacrificed at the altar of (s)he-who-shouts-loudest (the mix of those outraged seemed to be about 80/20, women to men).

My regret was today heightened after reading that 20 stray dogs A DAY are put to sleep in the UK. That shocks me. It’s dreadful. It shouldn’t be happening. A dog training spot on The One Show could have helped ease this terrible state of affairs.

Cowardly mis-management by the BBC, coupled with a relentless, and sometimes uncompromising barrage from “experts” of all persuasions and competence, effectively destroyed all paths back to reason.

It was only in the aftermath, when both the segment and Jordan had been summarily dismissed, and the taste of “victory” had been savoured, that the gung-ho hostility of the protesters gave way to a more conciliatory view, with sentiments such as “It was nothing personal, I’m sure Jordan’s very talented, and he’ll do well if he continues with his education.”

But even then, it seems, the iron fist of the vocal majority was still jabbing at the face of tainted opinion, even amongst its jubilant disciples. Somebody on the “Get Jordan Off etc” page posted links to a couple of Youtube videos, both of which showed positive reinforcement being used to rehabilitate food possessive dogs. One featured a trainer using a plastic hand on the end of a stick while the other showed a trainer bringing his feet into play. The dogs being trained clearly weren’t stressed, and there was plenty of positive reinforcement. I “liked” those links because I thought the videos were helpful. Sadly, those links have now been removed from the page. Perhaps they were considered unhelpful to the fundamentalist cause.

If only the protest had been somewhat restrained, the BBC might have seen some value in keeping the segment – perhaps with a change of format, with a number of trainers exchanging views. If they could have saved this valuable spot, it would have been a win win situation.

As it stands, there are no plans to include the FMD item in future programmes.  Nor, I suspect, are there any plans to include dog training items EVER again, on The One Show. The risks of failure are just too high.

What a wasted opportunity.

The BBC got it horribly wrong, in as much as they went for the quick fix and chose a trainer who idolises Cesar Millan (a more reviled idol would be hard to find, it seems). But so many of the people who are now congratulating themselves, on successfully removing this perceived abomination from our screens, must also count the cost.

When was the last time we had a dog training programme on UK TV? Victoria Stilwell two or three years ago, and before that a programme where celebrities were training puppies – but that must have been four or five years ago.

Facebook and Twitter are very powerful tools, which can do as much harm as good. They spawn a viral immediacy which not only gets the word out, and draws masses of people in, but also promotes a mob mentality, which can overwhelm and subsume reasoned discourse.

Many of the 20 dogs, which will be euthanised today in the UK, were abandoned because their owners couldn’t cope with them.  An informed dog training slot on TV could have helped save them.

The One Show Fix My Dog

Ebay is allowing unvetted classified ads for the sale of puppies. This opens the door for unscrupulous puppy farms/mills to exploit Ebay’s comfortable veneer of respectability for the promotion of their callous trade.

Boycott Ebay until they impose a site-wide ban on the sale of puppies and other live animals.

You can sign the petition here.

Stop Ebay listing puppies for sale in its classified ads

China’s horrific fur farms, where millions of dogs, cats and other animals are callously brutalised before being skinned alive, are the subject of a GLOBAL offline event, to be held at Chinese embassies on Friday, 16th September 2011, from 11:00Am until 05:00PM.

Despite years of worldwide condemnation, the Chinese government has persistently failed to both regulate the fur farms and enact animal welfare legislation.

Animals in China need a voice and this event provides us all with the opportunity to speak for them. This is our chance to tell the Chinese Government that enough is enough -  civilised societies do not allow this type of behaviour from their citizens.

This event has been organised by Kathy Michaels in association with animalsaviors.org – an Australian charity working tirelessly to end all cruelty to animals in China.

Full details, including links to (currently) 15 country-specific pages, can be found on the Facebook page ANIMALSAVIORS.ORG STOP THE SKINNING OF LIVE ANIMALS!

If you can’t attend the event in person, you can still help:

• Publicise the event, through your Facebook page and Twitter.
• Write to your Chinese embassy. Let them know that you support the event and ask that they act quickly to regulate fur farms and introduce animal welfare legislation.
• Never buy fur: not fur coats, items trimmed with fur, not even items labelled as faux fur (unscrupulous Chinese manufacturers mislabel cat and dog fur as “faux” to circumvent import restrictions).
• Organise a demo outside a shop that sells fur. Educating the public to not buy fur is a key element to the success of this campaign.

If you feel strongly about the abuse of animals in China, please speak up and make yourself heard.

UPDATE – The Animal Liberation Front are also holding an event on the same day.

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are also staging an offline event on 16th September, with full details on their Facebook page here: DEMO AT AL CHINESE EMBASSY’S TO CALL A HALT OF THE SKINNING OF LIVE ANIMALS (sic)

The ALF event runs from Friday 16th September at 11:30PM through to 02:30AM on Saturday, 17th September.

Worldwide Event 16th Sept at Chinese Embassies Stop Skinning Animals Alive