DOG THEFTS CRACKDOWN

Police taking new steps to tackle ‘cold-hearted crime’

The discovery of 83 suspected stolen dogs on a travellers’ site in Suffolk was headline national news. The dogs were found during a police raid on the West Meadows site near Ipswich last month. As a result, six people – three women and three men – were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to steal and were later bailed.

One of the mysteries of dog theft is what happens to the stolen dogs. This case might give a clue. A Suffolk Police statement said that it was suspected that many of the dogs were taken from outside Suffolk and that microchips were being scanned in a bid to return the dogs to their rightful owners. Not surprisingly, the police soon received numerous phone

they reveal is how much all our gundog breeds have changed in not much more than a century. There is, for example, a wonderful oil by the celebrated dog artist John Emms entitled Springer Spaniels on a Moor. It was painted in 1903, but these three spaniels are instantly recognisable as springers — heavily marked liver and white, with classic proportions and attractive heads. Sadly, it’s a type we have nearly lost today.

The text revealed that Hancock was unimpressed with the modern springer. “What is abundantly clear is that the English springer has simply lost its essential type. Broadly speaking, the show type looks like a docked setter, while the working dog resembles a liver and white cocker.”

He says gundog people generally care more about performance than appearance, but “you can lose a breed with that simplistic, narrow, almost self-centred approach”. Look at a modern trialling spaniel — you will see what he meant. Jemima Harrison, producer of the BBC film Pedigree Dogs Exposed, calls and emails from people who had lost dogs and were hoping their pet was among those recovered.

The fact that the raid took 10 hours to complete indicates that it was far from straightforward. However, there are encouraging signs that police forces are at last starting to take the issue of dog thefts seriously.

Last month, Nottinghamshire Police made the decision to appoint a dedicated dog theft lead, the first police force in England to do so (see Letters p10).

Craig Guildford, Nottinghamshire’s chief constable, said: “We want to prevent dogs being stolen in the first place, with the heartbreaking stress and trauma this causes the owners, and will be working hard to spread those messages. I want to send a clear message to those who seek to carry out this cold-hearted crime that it will not be tolerated, it is taken very seriously and we will come after you.”

Nottinghamshire Police’s lead is Chief Inspector Amy Styles-jones, to crack

recently published in her blog a long interview with Col Hancock, which was made in 2008.

It makes a fascinating read. He noted the ‘astonishing success story’ of labradors, a dog that was hardly known at the end of the 19th century, but is now our most popular breed. However, he queried whether the breed had actually gained anything in the past 120 years, querying whether labradors were still functional dogs.

“A lot of the working dogs don’t look like the show dogs at all. They are lighter, they are quicker, they are smaller-headed, they are lighter boned. Which is the correct labrador, the one that can operate in the field or the one that can win prizes

in the show ring?”

It’s a good question and one that deserves an answer.

Read the interview — it’s more than 7,000 words long — and it’s obvious that Hancock’s major concern was the declining health of pedigree dogs, the result of closed down on dog thefts. That still leaves 42 police forces across England and Wales without a dedicated dog theft officer, but hopefully they may all eventually make similar appointments.

Dog thefts will not stop until this horrible crime is taken seriously. breeding. “The closed gene pool is the result of Kennel Club recognition. It is an imposed sanction on dog breeders. If they don’t breed registered dog to registered dog, they cannot register the progeny.”

Extreme

He felt particularly strongly about what he called “excessive exaggeration in breed design”, giving as examples extreme feathering in setters; shorter-legged, longer-backed bassets; and flat-faced dogs that cannot breathe properly.

The davidhancockondogs.com website has an extensive archive of his work. Click on the period 1980 to 1989, for example, and there are more than 150 articles to browse, covering such topics as the ‘Gundogs of France’

“He felt strongly about ‘excessive exaggeration in breed design’”

and ‘Breeding a Better Bird Dog’. It’s a remarkable resource. Though David Hancock was never a member of the Kennel Club, he has left his personal research library of 640 books, 5,000 images, 30 scrapbooks and papers covering more than 30 years of research to the KC Library.