Heartbreaking crime

Dog theft is on the rise, and working gundogs are as at risk as any pet. David Tomlinson looks at how we can minimise the dangers

DOG THEFT, especially of working gundogs, is a puzzling crime. Every year hundreds of gundogs are stolen but no one seems to have much idea what happens to them. In a lifetime of shooting, I’ve never heard rumours of suspicious people offering trained gundogs at a bargain price. So if the people who steal them don’t sell them, what do they do with them?

They certainly don’t take them shooting and I can’t believe that there is an export market for them as there is with, for example, highperformance cars.

Though we might not know what really happens to them, the fact remains that many are stolen, few are ever recovered and there are equally few convictions made for dog theft. Frustratingly, it isn’t a crime that either the police or the courts take seriously, which goes some way to explaining the low conviction rate. Statistics I have seen show that in a typical year, just five per cent of reported dog thefts lead to prosecutions, of which a mere 1.5 per cent end in a conviction. Even then the thief is far more likely to end up with a caution than a prison sentence.

Part of the problem is with the law. Under the Theft Act 1968, a bicycle and car (vehicle) are separately classified but a dog, a sentient being, is lumped in with personal property. No consideration is given to the fact that, for most of us, our dog is a muchvalued member of our family. The loss of a dog under any circumstances is extremely upsetting, while there can be few things worse than having one’s companion stolen and not know what has happened to it. Curiously, before the Theft Act superseded it, the Larceny Act 1916 recognised dog theft with custodial sentences.

Valuable

Putting a value on a trained gundog is difficult, as relatively few are ever sold. Most of us buy puppies for anything from £400 to perhaps £1,200 and spend many hours training them. If the training was costed in at a modest £10 an hour, then there would be few working gundogs worth less than £3,000. However, this is a theoretical value and not one a thief can expect to make by selling on a stolen dog. It is probably unwise to talk of how valuable a gundog is, as this might well make a dog more attractive to thieves.

I’ve been prompted to write about dog theft following an email from reader and gundog enthusiast Arnot

“Under the Theft Act, a bicycle and car are separately classified, but a dog is lumped in with personal property”

Five per cent of stolen dogs are taken from vehicles