The Mail on Sunday

Under siege from East European gangsters, UK’s secret shelters for smuggled puppies

Lockdown’s made dogs more lucrative than drugs. And crooks will do ANYTHING to get their ‘goods’ back – even after they’ve been rescued

- By GIULIA CROUCH

SMALL enough to fit in the palm of your hand, Minnie is trembling visibly. Little wonder. It’s less than two days since the four-week-old chihuahua-cross puppy was stuffed into a bag and taken on a traumatic 30-hour car journey across mainland Europe to the Channel ports, then Britain, without food or water. Still too small for a convention­al dog jacket, Minnie is kept warm at night in a toddler’s sock after being ripped from her mother in a Bulgarian puppy farm. It is only thanks to good luck and the vigilance of the authoritie­s that she is now being cared for deep in kennels in the heart of the country. They are so secret that we have agreed not to reveal the location.

Minnie is just one victim of an increasing­ly violent trade mastermind­ed by criminal gangs from Eastern Europe and fuelled by the soaring demand for puppies during lockdown. With buyers prepared to pay £3,000 per dog, supposedly pedigree puppies offer a lucrative alternativ­e to drug traffickin­g – more lucrative, in fact, and lower-risk.

That’s why dogs have been discovered stuffed into hollowed-out car seats, crammed under bonnets next to red-hot engines, or locked behind false walls in the back of vans.

Some are smuggled on fake pet passports and sold on to unsuspecti­ng British buyers who pay thousands of pounds, only to be left wondering why their new companion is chronicall­y unwell, falls sick and dies – possibly within days.

And that’s why a major operation is now under way to rescue pups entering the country illegally, often by ferry or through the Channel Tunnel, from mainland Europe.

I visited one of four specialist centres set up to handle the ever-increasing volume of rescued animals. Here, dogs are cared for after they are seized by officials from Border Force or the Animal Plant and Health Agency which comes under the Department for Environmen­t, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

These are very bad, dangerous people – threats to our staff get personal

THE weakest dogs are fed every two to three hours and receive constant care in a ‘hospital block’ heated to 28C. Meanwhile, those recovering from illness play with chewy plastic toys. Smuggling had been a problem even before Covid-19. Under EU laws, dealers have been allowed to bring in dogs aged just 15 weeks. Before Britain joined the EU, puppies had to be at least ten months old before entering the UK.

Then came the virus and, with people confined to their homes, thousands wanted a puppy for company. It was inevitable that demand would outstrip supply. British breeders ran out of newborns, prices soared and foreign gangs saw their chance.

The scale of the problem can be exposed today with new figures from the Dogs Trust charity revealing that one in five of puppies advertised online in England and Scotland has been imported – with all the risks that entails.

Not only are many dogs under-age, they can suffer genetic and other weaknesses. Even so, with prices at an all-time high, the ‘street value’ of the animals at the rescue centre – more than 100 puppies – is so high that the criminal trafficker­s make brazen attempts to retrieve their ‘goods’, with violence.

‘We probably have more value on our site at the moment than most jewellers would carry in the centre of London,’ said Mary, the manager of the centre, who asked us not to give her real name.

‘These are very bad, dangerous people,’ she continues. ‘And it’s big business. We get in the way of hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of profit. We’ve had our reception smashed up, the perimeter fences set on fire, we’ve had people trying to ram-raid the gates, we’ve had physical assaults on staff, violent threats, intimidati­on.’

Once, a group of men parked outside the site and kept watch for three weeks, taking photos and following terrified staff home. Another time, a member of staff had to be treated in hospital for fractured vertebrae after being attacked in the car park by two thugs.

‘Threats get personal,’ says Mary. ‘One man vowed, “Because you’ve taken my pups, I’ll take yours.” Another threatened to find the new owner of his puppy and decapitate them both.

‘If more people found out we’re here, I would give it 24 hours before the puppies are in the back of a van and I’m in the back of an ambulance. Even at home, I’m paranoid about every bump or sound. But we are all these puppies have got.’

There are more than 60 closedcirc­uit TV cameras at the site. All doors have double locks, each staff member carries an alarm and there are panic buttons everywhere.

Staff often sleep in the kennels overnight to look after the dogs.

The centre, which currently cares for 127 dogs, with more arriving every day, is funded largely by charitable donations.

Latest arrivals include a litter of tiny dachshunds seized at Folkestone after Border Force officers found them crammed into a filthy supermarke­t bag in a car’s engine. At the centre, several breeds of dog bound from their beds vying for attention – golden labradors and chow chows, popular for their teddy-bear looks.

Staff say that dogs shipped here solo are the most pitiful, peeking timidly from their cages and less trusting of humans.

However, they all have one thing in common: their origin in the puppy farms of Central and Eastern Europe. Lithuania has been identified by the Dogs Trust as one of the prime offenders.

One dog, shown to The Mail on Sunday, was so badly malnourish­ed that its ribs protruded through paper- thin skin. As did a badly deformed hip.

In July, six dogs – three Maltese, two Havanese and a bichon frise –were found covered in engine oil in the back of a van at Dover after an attempt to smuggle them into Britain from Romania. They had to be shaved to remove the filth, which was possibly an attempt to disguise them.

Defra figures reveal that there have been more illegally landed

dogs since the beginning of lockdown until now (666) than there were in all of 2019 (404). And these are just the ones that are caught. With big profits to be made and few deterrents, it’s a growing criminal industry. And such is the demand that buyers are reluctant to ask questions about the puppies’ source.

Almost a third of buyers are so desperate for a dog that they overlook the fact that it’s been illegally smuggled into the country, according to a survey by the Dogs Trust.

Google searches for ‘buy a puppy’ increased by 115 per cent in the weeks following the start of lockdown. Some of the most popular breeds have more than doubled in price since then. The cost of a chow chow has gone up 134 per cent, now selling for about £2,700 as opposed to £1,120 in the spring. Pugs fetch £1,220 (up from £684) and beagle pup prices have shot up by 151 per cent. Popular breeds such as Pomeranian­s sell for as much as £12,500 on internet sites such as Gumtree.

The Dogs Trust says puppy-smuggling is now out of control and that the law is scant deterrent, with only two recent prosecutio­ns for the crime. ‘For smuggling cigarettes, the maximum sentence is seven years; for puppies, it’s 12 months,’ says Claire Calder from the charity. Often, those responsibl­e are let off with just a £1,000 quarantine fee if they even choose to pay it – a small price when 20 pups can fetch £50,000 from British buyers.

There is also a worrying trend of ‘puppy brokers’ who advertise on social media as if they’re the breeder but actually get the dogs from abroad, in some cases never meeting the puppies but just facilitati­ng their journey.

The Mail on Sunday spoke to a potential buyer who tried contacting one of these dealers via Instagram. She says: ‘I was offered an underage Pomeranian pup from Russia within minutes. I was asked for more than £650 plus an £850 delivery fee to “courier” it to London.’ She asked to see the puppy with its mother by video but was told ‘no’ and wasn’t shown proper documentat­ion.

The Government’s advice to anyone looking to buy a puppy is to always see the dog with its mother in the country it was born.

Marc Abraham, the celebrity vet and campaigner who helped Boris Johnson get his Jack Russell-cross rescue dog Dilyn, said importing pups too early can be disastrous. ‘ They’re time- bombs – medical, surgical, behavioura­l nightmares waiting to happen,’ he says. ‘There’s no accountabi­lity, no traceabili­ty and the puppies are probably going to die. And it’s not just the puppies that suffer but their mums and dads back in the puppy farms.’

He also warns that because the puppies won’t have been vaccinated, they could spread diseases to humans. ‘They are little furry bundles of death. If they do survive it’s very possible they’ll be nervously aggressive, they’ll be bi t ers – because they’ve been poorly socialised – a nd that’ s another health risk.’

In the summer, Love Island contestant Molly-Mae Hague’s puppy, a Pomeranian called Mr Chai, died six days after she got him. She was widely criticised for using a dealer known for importing puppies from abroad but she refused to elaborate.

Indeed, most customers are duped into thinking their dog has been bred in the UK in a scam called ‘dog-fishing’. Natalia Krystyna, a 41-year-old businesswo­man from Staffordsh­ire, was a victim. Six days after she bought Charlotte, a black pug, via the internet, the animal died from parvovirus, a highly infectious disease commonly seen in dogs imported from Central and Eastern Europe that attacks the intestines, causing severe vomiting, diarrhoea and dehydratio­n. The vendor subsequent­ly disappeare­d and Natalia was left £7,500 out of pocket for the dog and its vet’s fees.

She says: ‘There was nothing on the advert to suggest the dog had been imported. When she died, it was horrendous. I’ve got five children and they were all devastated. I contacted the seller and he got quite nasty and aggressive – I knew he’d never give us our money back and I was scared to chase him for it. There needs to be stricter punishment for these people.’

So what can be done? A Government spokesman said Britain already had one of the most rigorous and robust pet travel border checking regimes in Europe, adding that ‘all pets must enter the UK on approved routes and are checked by authorised pet checkers who carry out documentar­y and identity checks’.

Brexit offers a chance to change the law, too, so we can raise the age limit at which puppies can be imported. A Government inquiry is under way and campaigner­s are pushing for legislatio­n to raise the age from 15 weeks to six months.

Meanwhile, if you come across a pup you suspect may have been smuggled into the country, don’t be tempted to ‘rescue’ it. Mary, at the dog centre, says people should call Trading Standards.

For most dogs seized at the border, there is, fortunatel­y, a happy outcome. Two dachshunds who were skin and bones and highly anxious when they arrived are now confident, healthy and ready to go to a rehoming centre where they can be picked out by a loving new owner.

‘When the dogs find a home and I see pictures of them with families, that’s a heart- warming reward,’ says Mary.

When our dog died, it was horrendous. My children were devastated

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 ??  ?? SAFE: The chow chow pups that sell for £2,700 each. Left: A golden labrador pup and, top left, Giulia cuddles a 15-week-old dachshund
SAFE: The chow chow pups that sell for £2,700 each. Left: A golden labrador pup and, top left, Giulia cuddles a 15-week-old dachshund
 ??  ?? VALUABLE: The pups are so in demand that smugglers try to steal them back
VALUABLE: The pups are so in demand that smugglers try to steal them back
 ??  ?? ADORABLE: Four-week-old chihuahua-cross Minnie was smuggled in by car
ADORABLE: Four-week-old chihuahua-cross Minnie was smuggled in by car

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