The pandemic alone has caused a huge rise in the demand for dogs, not only in the UK, but all around the world. With people being required to stay home for safety reasons regarding COVID-19, it is no surprise that people want to purchase pets to help combat loneliness. Furthermore, there will be more time spent at home, looking after their animals.
Now that Christmas is approaching, this demand will only continue to grow because many families will want a dog as the perfect gift. This surge will then give rise to puppy farms.
Puppy farming is a huge problem, especially in Britain. A puppy farm is a money-oriented facility which profits off the breeding of puppies from poorly treated dogs kept in awful conditions. The dogs are often malnourished, kept in small cages without any access to outdoor areas and left with little human interaction. These breeders cover up the true situation by planting the puppies in people’s homes, staging it as if it was ethical, and this means people are unaware of what is really going on when they make their purchase. Puppies taken from puppy farms often have health conditions and trouble socialising due to the trauma of being in the farm at such an early stage of their lives.
It is always better to adopt rather than buy puppies from sources that may benefit off dog cruelty.
I first became interested in the dynamics of dog adoption after a visit to Greece. In the resort I stayed in, Costa Navarino, there is a local rescue called the Navarino Pet Community. They were encouraging people from the UK and other European countries to provide homes for dogs they had rescued. I had never realised that most rescues in the UK work with international contracts.
Many rescues in the UK rehome locally abandoned dogs, but some bring dogs from abroad by transit vans known as ‘happy buses.’ Each van brings many initially fostered or adopted dogs to homes here in the UK. The dogs are either picked up as strays from the streets, or are rescued from pounds in which they are put on death rows.
With Christmas almost here, dog rescues are afraid that more and more dogs will be abandoned within a short amount of time. Numbers from the Dogs Trust suggest that 47,500 dogs were abandoned in 2019 alone.
The pandemic has also affected not only dogs, but other pets. Due to the increased amount of time we have had to spend inside, protecting ourselves and others, pets have gotten used to long periods of human company and attention. Owners and animal experts are worried that as lockdowns become less frequent, the dogs will have issues such as separation anxiety and behavioural problems.
Before planning to get a new dog, whether it be for Christmas or any other time of the year, it is important to consider if you might be allowing puppy farmers to benefit from this. Do your research and remember that adopting can help save a disadvantaged animal’s life.
