Will your pet be abandoned

Left: A happy RSPCA inspector with an equally happy rescued dog. Below: three kittens dumped just after Christmas 2021

Heartache of festive pets

ANIMAL charities like the RSPCA are preparing for another heartbreaking Christmas with pets bought as presents being dumped in the NewYear.

The story is the same year after year as children plead with parents to buy a cat or dog for Xmas - then end up 2023 callously dumping it in the street.

In November, the RSPCA rescued three eight-week-old puppies, including one that died, dumped in a food waste bin in Kent, four puppies dumped in a garden inWarrington, and a puppy in a carrier bag inWestYorkshire.

The charity has also rescued five puppies with their umbilical cords still attached abandoned in a box in London, two cats abandoned after giving birth to kittens in theWest Midlands, and nine rabbits dumped in a wheelie bin in Nottinghamshire.

The heartache is never ending. From the start of 2022 to October RSPCA rescuers dealt with 13,159 incidents of abandonment, seeing an increase of 10,519 on the same figures from 2021.

Residents are being urged to look out for the warning signs of animals on sale from puppy farms

No matter how often animal charities tell us not to buy pets for Christmas, we do, and sadly many would-be pet owners are scammed – either they hand over their cash to find there is no puppy,.

The scammers are clever. In the financial year 2020 – 21 prospective pet owners were scammed out of two and a half million pounds.

The pandemic provided the perfect cover.As people are working from and spending more time at home, demand for pets has increased.

As the prices rose during Covid and more unscrupulous sellers entered the market it was easy for them to sell animals without any proper access to their premises because social distancing had to be maintained.

But puppy farms are not quite how most people imagine them,Andy Newman at Hounslow rescue centre said fraudsters often sell from what appears to be a respectable family home.

He went to one recently where on the surface everything seemed fine:

“It was a house, it wasn ’t a dirty cage or anything like that. It was a three bedroom house, there was a woman and a child and a mum dog was present” only as it turned out, “ mum dog wasn ’t mum.

“It was a borrowed dog or something along those lines – a dog that was friendly that they could pass off as mum. “The house wasn ’t theirs, it wasn ’t their child and the ‘ mum ’ wasn ’t the mum of the child. So it’ s just a front. ”

This problem is replicated all over the country and unscrupulous traders sell dogs knowing they are ill; the dogs are bred somewhere else, which probably does look like how you would imagine, with animals often left alone for hours on end in their own filth in poorly lit rooms, sharing drinking bowls, in unhygienic conditions where disease like Canine parvovirus easily spreads. Here is Andy Newman’s checklist for avoiding criminal activity: Ask for ID from the seller.Walk away and report the sale if they cannot provide it. Check the photo ID of the seller matches the address the puppies are being sold from, and that they can prove residence at the address. Never, ever, buy from any third party address however plausible the reason given. Beware of sellers of high value dogs who are unlicenced License should be displayed on the property and licence number placed in all advertisements. Beware puppies microchipped and vaccinated in a very short timeframe prior to sale Check the phone number listed in the advert in a search engine to see if any other adverts appea Report your concerns to the Local Authority AnimalWelfare,AnimalWarden, or Licensing teams, as well as any welfare charities