Doggy Tales

Puppy Awareness Week

Last week was Puppy Awareness week (PAW) which aims to ensure that puppies live healthy, happy lives with suitable owners, by spreading the ‘be puppy aware’ message.
Being puppy aware involves making sure you know which dog and breed is right for your lifestyle, so that you can care for it for life, and making sure you can separate responsible breeders from puppy farmers.

Every year the Kennel Club holds a Puppy Awareness Week (PAW) to spread this message: Stop puppy farming. The cost of sickly puppies soars when puppies are bought from disreputable sources. Puppies from puppy farms are bred with no regard for their health and well-being and are kept in appalling, unsanitary conditions.

Research carried out by the Kennel Club revealed some shocking statistics: one in ten people bought a ‘mail order pup’ from the internet online or from a newspaper advert, without seeing it first. Almost half of dog owners are spending more on vets’ fees than they had accounted for – more than one in four people (27 percent) say that they suspect that their puppy came from a cruel puppy farm. One in five pups were bought online without the pup being seen first end up with gastro-intestinal problems and 15 percent with the potentially deadly parvovirus. Many people are unknowingly sold pups smuggled into the UK from puppy farms abroad.

Make sure that you don’t buy from a puppy farmer, or from an ill-informed and unknowledgeable breeder, who has not taken all of the steps to give your puppy the best chance in life.

For more info visit www.thekennelclub.org.uk