We were shut inside, alone for nearly 18months of our lives, with little or no physical contact with other people or the outside world. Consequently, this led to a large surge in the levels of loneliness within the British population. The Office of National Statistics found that the amount of adults who said they felt lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’ rose from around 5% to 7.2%. While to you that may not seem like the biggest difference, it is actually a change of about 1.1 million people. Moreover, in the first month of lockdown alone, 7.4 million people said their general well-being was affected due to feelings of loneliness and isolation. 

 

This then led to us having to resort to communicating and spending time with the only things we could, animals. It was found that 3.2 million families or households bought a pet during lockdown and a popular website for buying a dog from, The Kennel Club, reported a 168% increase in people searching for puppies on the website from the beginning of lockdown to May that same year. We all not only wanted but desperately needed some sort of company, whether you lived alone or with others with whom you were completely and utterly bored with. So a new pet was the perfect solution.

 

However, this sadly led to a large surge in the amount of missing pets recently, the amount of dogs being stolen has increased by nearly a fifth since the first lockdown and in 2020 around 7 pets were reported stolen each day

 

But when more of something is being bought, the price rises and with animals it’s no different. The cost of a new animal is rising drastically and so those who breed and sell puppies are going to earn more. Sadly, criminals and thieves have used this growth to their advantage. It was discovered that a majority of the stolen dogs were not just puppies but female dogs that could then be used for breeding, increasing profits for the people who steal them.