Irish dealers place ‘profits over welfare’ in trafficking sick puppies to Scotland
DESIGNER puppies farmed in Ireland are dying within hours of being placed in the arms of new owners in Scotland in a distressing pandemic phenomenon.
It is estimated that thousands of puppies are trafficked into ports like Cairnryan from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland every year from large dog farms.
As prices for Cockapoo, Pug and Chihuahua pups have surged during the lockdown to upwards of £2,000, one Scottish charity is fielding an unprecedented number of calls relating to sick and dying puppies commercially bred by suspected Irish puppy dealers.
In a new departure, Irish dealers are hiring Airbnb homes in Scotland as a front to sell fashionable cross-breed puppies for record prices on sites like Gumtree.
“People go to the Airbnb thinking this is a nice home and then they get a pup from somebody, they’re nearly always Irish, and the next thing that pup is really ill or dead,” said an undercover inspector from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
“One woman I spoke to had bought a Cockapoo and within four hours it was dying. That is really common.
“What they are getting is £500 of vet bills or a dead pup — that’s the harsh reality.
“There are hundreds of pups coming into the country every week through the ports from Ireland. It’s both sides of the Irish Border. A lot of the time, they travel to the south to ‘stock up’.
“Some of them will just put them in the back of a van in a crate, some of them will secrete them in the boots, we’ve seen them in big toolboxes with holes cut out for air in the corner.”
Puppy smuggling has been running to Britain for years due to bigger profits, but it has escalated in the last year due to soaring prices thanks to lockdown demand.
Most puppy trading is suspected to be linked to two families in Ireland.
“It’s two family groups who are involved in crime. We tend to see a trend of two separate names but all different first names,” said the undercover inspector.
“They are bringing them over from Northern Ireland all the time.
“They have been historically brought in from Ireland daily, but the prices are now astronomical. It is a multimillion pound business.
“During lockdown, the demand for pups went through the roof. But you couldn’t keep up with the calls from people buying pups that were dying or ill. The calls about the illegal puppy trade more than doubled compared to the year before.
“Cockapoos are going for around £2,800 pounds, Labradors are going for about £2,000, a Shih Tzu cross is £2,000, Jack Russells are going for £1,100.”
The fragile pups, who often do not have the protection of vaccinations, succumb to dormant diseases on the journey to Scotland from Ireland.
“They don’t care,” said the Scottish inspector.
“We actually had a chap from Ireland two years ago caught trying to throw pups in the River Clyde in Glasgow as they were starting to show the bad effects of parvo. We’d caught him a few times before.”
The inspector said the health problems of the young pups coming from Ireland are horrific.
“As you can imagine, these pups are just getting dragged from their mothers at four or five weeks. They are loaded with health problems — campylobacter, parvovirus, so many different parasitic infections. The owner will be told they are a wee bit tired from the journey. They will start having diarrhoea and vomit and whine in pain.
“There is no care, a lot of these bacterial infections are picked up simply because of dirty conditions.”
Two Irish puppy traders were caught at the end of November last year with pups.
“I have got a case that went to court but the person hasn’t turned up,” said the inspector. “That’s the difficulty when you’re dealing with people in Ireland.
“These pups were in horrific cramped conditions, covered in faecal matter and urine. Two died very quickly, one was euthanised within a couple of days. That was quite typical.”
She said the Scottish and Irish governments need to tackle the large-scale breeders churning out sick and dying puppies in horrific breeding farms in a joint effort.
“We need the (Irish authorities) to try and stop them coming out of the country with them before they get to the ports in Scotland.
“Obviously there are a lot of known illegal breeders, but I’d also like to see large-scale legal puppy farms who are licensed to breed vast numbers of dogs shut down in Ireland.
“They are churning hundreds upon hundreds of pups weekly, and that is not an exaggeration.
“The demand is there, and the supply is coming from Ireland. It’s pretty simple. We always say it’s profits over welfare.”