Puppy farmers breed dogs with the sole aim of lining their pockets. They don’t breed dogs with the sole aim of improving their breed and producing healthy, functional dogs – which should be the ONLY reason to EVER breed a single litter of dogs. Period.

Puppy farmers have been registering their dogs with the Kennel Club. The Kennel Club knows this.

Kennel Club registration, you see, adds ‘value’ and can raise the price a breeder may charge for their stock. It also leads the public in to thinking they are buying quality. That’s why they do it, see. The puppy farmer wants Kennel Club paperwork in order to present a credible façade or, believe you me, they would NOT be spending the extra money on doing it – profit margins are crucial to the commercial dog producers and dealers.

The Kennel Club has acknowledged that high volume breeders use its registry. Take a look:

Dr Sampson advised that Bill Lambert, the Accredited Breeder Scheme advisor, does inspect and completes around 50 visits per year. All breeders (mostly who own multiple breeds) who breed more than 10 litters per year have been visited and some removed from the list.

The above comes from a breed council meeting held just last year. Re-read it if you like.

All breeders – mostly who own multiple breeds – who breed more than 10 litters per year.

Let’s give the quote some context. The above response is cited in the minutes from the meeting in relation to the following:

The question was raised concerning checks on breeders premises and whether any Accredited Breeders had been taken off the list for non compliance.

Now, this is a nice hypothetical for you: If you heard about a breeder producing LESS than 10 litters per year, let’s say, oh I don’t know, maybe NINE litters? Who also owned ‘multiple breeds’ – what would you think they might be labelled as? A ‘high volume’ dog breeder?

Let’s move on. I have another hypothetical question for you.

You run a dog breed registry.

You don’t like puppy farmers. Oh no. You do NOT like puppy farmers. Or, for the benefit of clarity, let’s call them ‘high volume dog breeders’.

You don’t want these high volume dog breeders (OK, puppy farmers! Let’s call them what they are shall we?) to sully the name and reputation of your breed registry.

How do you prevent them from doing this?

A) You impose limits on individual breeders, dictating that  no more than 5 litters may be registered from the same breeder and/or premises in any given year.

B) You also insist that you will not accept a single registration without a veterinary certificate validating the health and condition of the dam along with appropriate breed health screening paperwork.

or

C) You don’t do any of that, but set up a SEPARATE scheme so you can still continue to take registrations from those high volume breeders who don’t health screen their stock…. but can act like you HAVE made a leap of progress by telling people to use your ‘accredited’ breeders instead?

We have an accredited breeder scheme, we have a breed registry – one contains puppy farmers and plenty of breeders that don’t adhere to basic health screening standards and one contains breeders who might be producing 9 litters or more per year but who fall under the category of being ‘accredited’. Both breeders can register their puppies with the Kennel Club. Both get Kennel Club registration paperwork and their registrations are endorsed with the Kennel Club seal of approval and, ultimately, the Kennel Club banks the cheques from both.

So, a simple question:

If you had that kind of a set up and you REALLY wanted to no longer allow a SINGLE puppy farmer to register their puppies with you and sully your name, cause damage by association to the GOOD breeders on your registry and PROFIT from the suffering of commercially bred dogs – why wouldn’t you make this simple move:

SHUT DOWN the registry and ONLY operate the accredited breeder scheme?

Seriously. Why would you not do that?

Yes, there’s a LOT of money in that breed registry. More money, in fact, than pours in to the accredited breeder scheme. But if YOU were going to stand on a soap box and lecture people about the horrors of puppy farming, wouldn’t YOU try to make DAMN sure you weren’t still cashing the cheques from some of the very people whom you are warning the public about? Wouldn’t you feel a bit ‘funny’ wagging your finger at the public preaching about puppy farmers when you’ve got some seriously high volume breeders using your own registry and sending their cash your way?

The Kennel Club have issued a press release today that states:

The Kennel Club and Thepet.net co-founders, TV vet Marc Abraham and social media guru Andrew Seel, want people to know the truth about where badly-bred puppies come from and help them choose a happy and healthy puppy bred by a reputable breeder, rather than a sick or diseased farmed one.

Kennel Club Veterinary Advisor and TV vet, Marc Abraham, said: “I am treating more and more puppies that have come from puppy farms than ever before.

“Puppy buyers often don’t know how to spot the signs of an irresponsible breeder and so continue to unwittingly line the puppy farmers’ pockets, fueling this cruel trade.

“It is imperative that prospective puppy buyers buy from a Kennel Club Accredited Breeder and that they sign the Kennel Club’s petition to get the principles and standards of this Scheme made mandatory for all breeders. These breeders love and care for their puppies, agree to follow certain standards and agree to allow a Kennel Club inspector access to their premises. Here are my top tips for choosing a puppy:

1.      For a pedigree puppy always contact the Kennel Club first for their list of reliable and reputable Kennel Club Accredited Breeders.
2.      Ask to see the puppy’s mother, who should always be with the pups.
3.      Always see the puppy in its breeding environment and ask to look at the kenneling conditions, particularly if they were not raised within the breeder’s house. If you suspect the conditions are not right, then do not buy the puppy.
4.      Be suspicious of any breeder selling more than one or at most two breeds.
5.      Be prepared to be put on a waiting list – a healthy puppy is well-worth waiting for.
6.      Ask if you can return the puppy if things don’t work out. Responsible breeders will always say yes.
7.      Never buy a puppy because you feel like you’re rescuing it. You’ll only be making space available for another poorly pup to fill.
8.      Consider alternatives to buying a pedigree puppy like getting a rescue dog or pup, and remember that every breed of dog has its own breed rescue society.”

People can sign the Kennel Club’s petition, which asks the government to enforce a mandatory set of standards for all breeders, based on those already followed by Kennel Club Accredited Breeders and that put the puppies’ health and welfare first and foremost.

OK.

Some sage words there. No doubt.

But let’s dig, shall we?

Be suspicious of any breeder selling more than one or at most two breeds.

Really?

30 seconds.

30 seconds is all it took me to find Kennel Club Accredited breeders who breed more than two breeds. I did a quick search on the Kennel Club website for Accredited Breeders and within just a few clicks I located accredited breeders who bred more than two different breeds.

So, I’m confused.

I should be “suspicious” of these (accredited) breeders yet….

“It is imperative that prospective puppy buyers buy from a Kennel Club Accredited Breeder”

I must reiterate, it took me less than 30 seconds to find Kennel Club accredited breeders who breed more than two breeds.

And here’s the thing, I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever in accepting that a quality breeder can happen to breed more than two different breeds and a horrendous breeder may produce just one litter in their entire lives. The point is that there is confusion, muddied communication/advice and, ultimately, rampant hypocrisy at play.

How can we be expected to listen to a lecture on the horrors of puppy farming when it is coming from an organisation that accepts the cheques of the very people it is seeking to warn us about?

Most right minded people want puppy farming to become a thing of the past. I am absolutely certain that the Kennel Club would like it that way too. But, fact is, the Kennel Club is running a two tiered system which means they ARE enabling puppy farmers to operate under a veil of implied credibility. If you cash the cheque yet have the means to set the standard rather than take a ‘do as we say, not as we do’ approach, then some questions need to be asked.

But let’s remember this. Let’s focus on it. Let’s draw attention to it. Let’s ask it, out loud:

If the Kennel Club believes in its Accredited Breeder Scheme so much. If the Kennel Club believes ALL breeders should comply to the standards of the Accredited Breeder Scheme, then why don’t they simply do away with their flawed registry and ONLY operate the Accredited Breeder Scheme?

Surely if they want to be taken seriously on an issue like puppy farming and their commitment to eradicating sub standard breeding practices, they could take a giant step toward that goal by NOT allowing those very breeders who they publicly condemn to register their puppies with the Kennel Club and tacitly give those breeders the credibility they so clearly crave?

Let’s wind the clock back to February of this year  when Caroline Kisko of the Kennel Club informed Dog World newspaper that they (The KC) would not insist on operating the standards of the Accredited Breeder Scheme on a wholesale basis across all of the breeders who register puppies with the Kennel Club unless it applied to ‘all dogs’.

The question was put to Ms Kisko that all breeding dogs be subject to compulsory health screening. Here is her (verbatim) response:

Well, that to us is, is one of those things that if everybody joins something like the Accredited Breeders’ Scheme, and I’m not saying it has to be a Kennel Club’s one, but if everybody follows the requirements of something like the breeders’ scheme, then you would have that in the palm of your hand, but we, the Kennel Club is not going to go down that route for every Kennel Club registered dog as long as it’s not a requirement for other dogs, because all that’ll happen is that you’ll have the bar set at one level for Kennel Club registered dogs and the bar set way down low, in other words probably non existent for all the other dogs, and that’s actually completely unfair on both Kennel Club registered dogs and people buying dogs because… ok, you can say, well, that way we’ll know that those are the crème de la crème. What about all the other dogs? Do we not care about how they’re bred? Of course we do, and because of that, the Kennel Club will hold out against this idea that you can set one set of criteria for Kennel Club registered dogs and a different set for other dogs.

This is bizarre thinking.

Imagine if The Telegraph newspaper informed its readers that it would not insist on strict, high quality editorial standards unless all other newspapers agreed to follow exactly the same, over and above those minimum requirements according to the laws of the land? “We’ll only adhere to the same editorial standards as The Beano unless we’re forced to do otherwise”. No. It doesn’t work that way. Why would an organisation not set its own standards as high as it possibly could rather than simply ask to be judged against the lowest common standards expected of every other Tom, Dick and Harry?

By worrying about ‘every other dog’ the Kennel Club continues to allow sub-par breeders to thrive. I believe they know it, too.

The Kennel Club knowingly operates its very own two tier system:

1) The Accredited Breeder scheme – which it implores you to acknowledge as the best, most foolproof method of buying a quality puppy

2) The Kennel Club registry, which contains puppies registered by commercial/high volume breeders (you know, PUPPY FARMERS!).

What lies at the heart of these obvious double standards?

You decide.

But please, focus on the issue of puppy farming and give your full, unequivocal support to Puppy Farm Awareness Day via these superb groups:

• Puppy Love
• Hope UK
• Puppy Alert

I guarantee this: NONE of those organisations are cashing cheques from puppy farmers. They don’t operate double standards and they are in a position to give you sound, clear advice on how you can help to fight the cruel trade of the commercial dog dealers.

Cadey Lee Deacon was killed whilst she was in the care of her mother and step father. She was killed at the Rocket pub in Leicestershire. Two dogs were destroyed, the inquest did not learn which of the dogs killed Cadey.

The dogs, Rottweilers, were Bruno and Bess. Bruno was a male, Bess a female. They were reported to have lived on the roof of the pub.

The owners of the dogs were not present at the time of the fatality. The dogs were euthanised immediately, no temperament tests were ever carried out.

2) Ellie Lawrenson.

Ellie was killed on New Year’s eve by her uncle’s dog, Reuben.

Reuben was later identified as a pit bull type. He was a male dog.

Reuben’s owner, Kiel Simpson, was not present at the time the fatal attack happened. Reuben was euthanised.

3) Archie-Lee Hirst.

Archie-Lee was killed by a female Rottweiler dog which belonged to his grandparent’s.

He was killed whilst in the care of a family babysitter. Archie-Lee was taken outside to the dog who, the inquest in to his death was told, had received no exercise in 5 months.

The Rottweiler was killed by police marksmen at the scene of the fatality.

The dog’s owners were not present at the time of the child’s death.

4) Jaden Mack

Jaden Mack died whilst in the care of his grandmother.

Two dogs were present when the baby was killed, a Jack Russell and a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

The Staffordshire Bull Terrier was a male dog named Tyson. The Jack Russell Terrier was a male dog called Charlie.

The dogs owner was present at the time of the fatality, but was not awake, having fallen asleep only to wake up and discover the attack had already occurred. It is not known which dog pulled the baby down from the table where he was asleep, nor was it ever determined which dog in particular killed the child. Both dogs were destroyed.

5) John-Paul Massey

John-Paul Massey was killed by his uncle’s dog, determined to be a pit bull type dog.

John-Paul was in the care of his grandmother when he was fatally mauled. The dog’s owner was not present.

The dog was a male dog. At the time of writing, no inquest has been heard.

6) Andrew Walker

Andrew Walker was a 21-year old man, killed by two German Shepherds whilst he was living with his friend, the owner of the dogs.

Mr Walker attempted to intervene in a fight between the two dogs, Lennox and Nico – two male German Shepherds.

The dogs owner was eventually able to bring the dogs under control. The inquest in to Mr Walker’s death was not told about a previous attack carried out by another dog belonging to the owner of the German Shepherds, where a woman suffered a serious hand injury and her own dog – a Miniature Poodle – lost its life. The dog in question on this occasion was a Rottweiler.

—-

Statistics:

Breeds

x 2 pit bull types.
x 1 Jack Russell
x 3 Rottweilers
x 1 Staffordshire Bull Terrier
x 2 German Shepherd Dogs.

Sex

Pit bulls – both male.
Jack Russell – male.
Rottweilers – x 2 female, 1 male.
Staffordshire Bull Terrier – male.
Jack Russell – male.
German Shepherds – x 2 male.

Tot: 2 female – 8 male.

Circumstance

Owner of dog present at time of fatality – twice, however in the case of Jaden Mack, the dogs owner was asleep and didn’t see the attack and was unable to intervene. In the case of Andrew Walker, the victim was on his own in the garden with the dogs, the dogs owner arrived at the scene having heard the commotion. The rest of the attacks, the owner was not present.

Where did the attacks happen?

In every single fatality, the attack happened in the home where the dogs lived.

In every single case, the the attacks did not begin when the dogs owner was present/conscience.

—-

What can we learn from this information?

Can you spot a risk profile from these stats?

Would you be able to tell family, friends, ANYONE who’ll listen about how to minimise risk?

Would you be comfortable leaving your dog in the care of someone who was not the dog’s owner if there was a chance children might be introduced to the dog(s) when you weren’t there?

As I said at the outset, this is food for thought, not a conclusion of anything.

It transcended the pet press and the professional pet insiders and went and placed a huge marker down that was visible for the entire country.

The firestorm that surrounded the documentary created a split.

There were those who claimed it to be the most important thing to happen in terms of advancing the message of dog health campaigners and there were those who spat their dummies out, stamped their feet and cried mercilessly that the documentary was nothing more than a sensationalist piece of fiction.

Those people still believe that today, I’m convinced.

Those people will not be told that the problems affecting pedigree dogs and pedigree dog breeding are extensive and in desperate need of massive reform.

Those people are now finding their initial arguments much harder to stand up.

On the back of Pedigree Dogs Exposed;

• The RSPCA withdrew from Crufts
• The Dogs Trust withdrew from Crufts
• The PDSA withdrew from Crufts
• An independent scientific report commissioned by the RSPCA wholeheartedly supported the findings of Pedigree Dogs Exposed

And now, the government has stepped in to back the documentary’s key messages too.

The Kennel Club, for their part, have moved to make some changes – nowhere near enough, but some – and they have publicly acknowledged that Pedigree Dogs Exposed caused them to accelerate those changes. This, it has to be said, after complaining to OfCom (The British broadcast regulator) about Pedigree Dogs Exposed in the aftermath and spending an inordinate amount of time arguing black and blue that things were all in hand and they should be just left to get on with it.

Pedigree Dogs Exposed called what has happened to our pure bred pets the biggest animal welfare scandal of our time.

Please, make no mistake – this is not sensationalism, it’s 100% correct.

The sheer volume of health problems that we now nonchalantly acknowledge as ‘breed traits’ is nothing short of disgusting.

We have pet food companies manufacturing dog food and marketing it as beneficial for the disabilities suffered by that particular breed.

We have visibly unhealthy dogs STILL taking prizes at Kennel Club endorsed dog shows.

And, worse, the dog community is still infected by a small group of small minded people who simply refuse, in the face of massive, overwhelming evidence, to see what is before their very eyes.

The great news is, things are changing. The thinking that has held back pedigree health reform is – quite rightly – being questioned and, more importantly, dismissed as the self-interested, misguided nonsense that many of us have always recognised it to be.

No longer should the public tolerate the deliberate disabling of man’s best friend.

No longer should we blindly accept the empty promises of ‘we’ve got it all in hand’ from an organisation that’s over 100 years to ‘get it all in hand’.

The momentum for change is building. The evidence is overwhelming. We can’t let things EVER return to the way they were. Dogs deserve far better, hopefully they’ll now begin to get it.

READ THE APGAW PEDIGREE DOG HEALTH REPORT HERE ->

Yes, yes he is.

Kit Malthouse, writing in The Times newspaper has parroted, almost word for word, the rhetoric and mistruths spewed up by former Home Secretary Ken Baker in calling for a ‘gentle phasing out’ of ‘weapon dogs’.If ever you needed evidence that the ‘status dog’ message was going to cause more harm than good (as we have often repeated on these pages) then today, we have it.

The RSPCA has a ‘status dog’ campaign running at the moment. I know this, because they send me emails asking for donations to help with the ‘status dog’ problem.

Still, to this day, nobody has EVER been able to give me a legal or even a loose definition of what a ‘status dog’ actually is, but let’s move on from that little oversight to the rantings of Malthouse – who is also a member of the London Assembly.

In his Times piece, he writes:

certain types of dogs are inherently more aggressive than other. At the top of the list are bull breeds, developed for one purpose: to attack and fight.

Bull terriers were bred as weapons, to duel or bait with, for their owner’s entertainment and status, and only once we recognise their atavistic instincts, as those who train them to fight do, can we start to frame legislation that may have a lasting effect. As well as punishing owners appropriately for use of this weapon, we should be bolder about removing it from circulation altogether.

I have emphasised the last line and I’m sure it will send a chill down the spine.

What, exactly, is he proposing?

We already HAVE breed specific legislation! We have the law that his equally ignorant partner in bull breed prejudice implemented in 1991. How can it be that we’ve had a law for nearly 20 years that was designed to do EXACTLY what these two are calling for, and yet the ‘status dog problem’ is, we are told, bigger than ever?

The irony seeping out of the entire article is pungent. But it gets worse, much worse.

In Ontario, that is what has happened. The provincial government produced a law that banned all bull breeds and derivatives, including pitbulls and the Staffordshire bull terrier. All such existing dogs had to be registered, neutered and muzzled, leading to the bull-types dying out and owners learning to love the labrador or pug. The result? A huge fall in the number of dog-related injuries and incidents. This approach manages to be both humane to those who have a dog of this type and draws a line under the problem.

Serious penalties will make dog owners think twice, but surely it is time for us to look to our Commonwealth cousins and find a way gently to phase out the canine weapons that terrorise the streets of Peckham, Toxteth and Moss Side.

You may have noticed, Mr Malthouse is actually calling for a ‘gentle phasing out’ (which means killing, by the way – gentle phasing out sounds better, but it means killing) of  bull breeds.

If you own a bull breed ‘or derivative’ I can imagine how your feeling right now.

But don’t worry, you can just ‘learn to love the Labrador or the Pug’.

Yes, here is a man who is clearly in touch, who clearly understands how to ‘fix’ the problem of irresponsible dog ownership – it involves ‘gentle phasing out’. That’s his final solution.

But let’s have a look at the height of his ill informed idiocy.

The provincial government produced a law that banned all bull breeds and derivatives, including pitbulls and the Staffordshire bull terrier. All such existing dogs had to be registered, neutered and muzzled, leading to the bull-types dying out and owners learning to love the labrador or pug.

The above is categorically untrue. Absolutely categorically not true. Don’t believe me? Well speak to anyone in Ontario about how well their breed ban is working out and ask anyone who had their dog taken and killed if they’ve, instead ‘learned to love the Labrador or Pug’ instead. (I’m not even TOUCHING the health issues related to a Pug, they’d be wasted on this guy.)

The process he’s described is the exact process we implemented in 1991. It’s BSL. And yet here we are, moaning about the rise in ‘weapon dogs’.

When will these people realise that the definition of madness is to do the same things over and over and expect a different result?

Want a further insight in to his thinking? Read this:

Clearly, owners are part of the solution: they are in possession of a weapon and should be treated as such

Yes, you read that correctly. Owners are only ‘part’ of the solution, this final solution for bull breeds.

Wrong.

Owners are ALL of the solution.

Dogs, all of them, are the product of their upbringing and environment.

Now, let’s examine some stats shall we:

Cadey-Lee Deacon: Killed by her grandparent’s dogs at her grandparent’s home (Rottweiler)

Ellie Lawrenson: Killed by her uncle’s dog whilst at her grandparent’s home  in care of grandmother (Pit Bull)

Archie-Lee Hirst: Killed by his grandparent’s dog whilst in the care of a young babysitter (Rottweiler)

Jaden Mack: Killed by his grandmother’s dogs whilst in care of grandmother who was asleep (Staffie and Jack Russell)

Now, remind me – which of these dogs are the ‘weapon’ dogs terrorising our city streets.

These are the dogs on the fatality list. Fatalities caused by dogs occur, almost without single exception, in the family home and tend to be carried out by dogs belonging to the family of the person (usually a child) who is killed.

There is a pattern to fatal dog attacks (have a read of the stats I’ve just posted, even a moronic legislator should be able to spot the pattern).

Malthouse opened his piece by citing The RSPCA:

The RSPCA says its hospitals are “full to the brim” with weapon dogs

Weapon dogs?

Could we do a BETTER job of ‘branding’ these dogs, because, you know, I think there’s still one or two of the thuglife on the street who haven’t heard yet.

Let’s call them; ‘Pyscho dogs’ – ‘Street killa’ – ‘Nike dogs’ – ‘Thugz dogz’ – ‘Beast dogz’.

Because the ONLY job being done with ignorant, ill informed and, frankly, despicable statements like this is creating a DEMAND for the dog from the very people they’re moaning about.

Previously, I wrote ‘What does Alice Cooper and the Dangerous Dogs Act Have in Common?’

By banning something, by whipping up a frenzy about it, by ‘branding’ it, you create a DEMAND for it from the exact demographic you are complaining about.

The history of the world teaches us lessons in this respect.

When you get a locality which becomes a hotspot for suicides, the media coverage and ‘hype’ adds to the problem. We know this to be true.

When you give certain media coverage to the types of teens who enter schools and take lives, it adds to the problem. We know this be true.

When you stick a label on a record ‘Parental Discretion is Advised’ you may as well have done the marketing yourself, to the demographic who you are trying to ‘shield’.

When we spit up a frenzy about ‘weapon dogs’ you are, I guarantee, whetting the appetite for these breeds by the demographic who are responsible for the suffering.

Ignorance may be bliss, but it leads to an exacerbation of the problem.

These labels don’t help. They hinder.

Let’s remind ourselves of some definitive facts:

Cruelty to animals is a crime.
Deliberately intimidating people (with dog or without) is a crime.

So, how about this for a radical idea – if you catch someone being cruel to a dog, you prosecute them under the laws that were put in place for that crime. If you catch someone deliberately intimidating people (with a dog or without) then you prosecute them under the laws that apply. Simply going on ANOTHER dog killing spree will not only fail to resolve the problem, it will spell disaster, resentment and any of the many THOUSANDS of responsible owners of beautiful bull breeds whom Matlhouse would like to ‘gently phase out’, you might want to contact him and let him know your opinion on whether you should be forced to ‘learn to love the Labrador or Pug’.

It is already a crime to do what these youths are being accused of.

A continuation of the failed policies of the Baker government will spell yet more failure.

That there are people who hold these views and happen to have a position of power, makes me – genuinely – ashamed to share the same planet as them, let alone the same country.

Contact Kit Malthouse

I take my dog to the vet for treatment on a lump that has suddenly appeared on her leg.

My vet gives me some medicine and cream and tells me to come back in two weeks.

I do. The lump is still there.

I see a different vet. This vet says they’ll have to operate as the position and feel of the lump gives concern for cancer.

Now, I obviously agree – without hesitation. I pay for the surgery. I pay for the cost of the biopsy on the removed lump. I pay for the after care. I’m £700 down.

My dog’s on the mend and it suddenly dawns on me; why was I recommened the cream in the first place if the position and feel ‘needed’ surgery?

If the above sounds like a far fetched scenario, think again – it happened. Not to me. But it happened.

Now, let’s take a look at price variance.

Why should/can one vet charge £4.00 for a Drontal worming tablet and another charge £5.90 for the EXACT same pill? Same dosage, same brand, same pill. Why?

Well, I can answer my own question, why – they can, because they can.

Vets are a small business. Fact. They are a for profit enterprise. And I am the LAST person on earth to advocate vets become anything other than innovative, entreprenurial businesses. Where my problem lies is in the fact that there is a groundswell of diquiet amongst a significant number of pet owners, upset, confused at how and why they got charged £300 for a neutering procedure whereas their neigbour got the EXACT same procedure done for £100 less with a vet down the road.

If we find ourselves becoming cynical or second guessing our vets, we’re in trouble. More to the point, our pets are in trouble. We need absolute complete trust in our vets. And I believe a way to achieve this is by a standard, national veterinary invoice.

The invoice would NOT standardise charges. It would NOT prevent vets from charging whatever they see fit for the services and products they offer. What it would do is legally compel ALL vets to declare exactly what their customers are paying for.

So if a neutering operation was charged at £300, the invoice would list:

- Cost of labour
- Cost of anesthetic
- Cost of dressing
- Cost of drugs

I would like to see vet drugs sold at a standard, recommended retail price – so if it’s a medicine that I can only get on prescription, I would like the price to be the same for that drug whether I use a vet in Nottingham or Nottinghill. A margin for the vet can still be built in to the retail price, if a vet wanted to retail the drugs above the national recommended retail price, then it should be declared on the invoice along the lines of (Sold at £0.35 above RRP).

I don’t mind paying it, but I want to know EXACTLY what I’m paying for. I want to have the power of comparison. I want to be happy that – should I want to – I can shop around for a vet who works at a lower hourly rate or a vet who operates a ‘RRP policy on all pet medicines’.

I don’t want restrictions, I just want transparency. I want them same level of disclosure from vets that I expect from the garage who services my car, because although I acknowledge the main dealer will charge me 35% more than the garage in my town for parts and labour, I am happy in the knowledge that I can at least do a side by side comparison of both providers and make an informed decision on who to use.

British vets are some of the best in the world. We should be very, very grateful to have such a depth of skilled professionals to care for our pets. All we want is more clarity. There are vets who fleece owners for every penny. They are, fortunately, the tiny minority (and let’s not overlook that) – well, fine! Let them. But let’s have a national vet invoice that means we can pick apart the precise elements of our bill and choose our vets accordingly.

BVA support for Crufts not met with unanimous support of vets

The book, Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living claims  the average Collie eats 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, giving it a high impact on the planet.

I went on to Amazon to see if the book was only available as a digital (evironmentally friendly) edition. Alas no. The paperback is available for sale ready to be loaded on to a diesel powered truck following the cutting down of some trees and being sprayed with ink. Whether the paper is recyled or not, let’s just hope the book doesn’t sell millions – because the environmental impact might require even more owners to eat their dogs to save this oh so fragile planet of ours.

Alice Cooper, founder of the Solid Rock foundation - a charity that helps disadvantaged youngsters

The year is 1972.

Word from the United States is that original ‘shock-rock’ superstar Alice Cooper is making headlines for doing terrible, depraved things in a live stage show containing everything from animal sacrifice to full on necrophilia.

Of course, rumour and gossip fuel the fires. In reality, one single incident propelled Alice Cooper to notoriety. At a concert in Toronto someone in the crowd threw a live chicken on stage. Why anyone would bring a live chicken to a rock concert is anyone’s guess, but Cooper collected the bird and, being a boy from Detroit who’d never been on a farm in his life, threw it back – assuming “It had wings, I thought it would fly.”

Except, it didn’t quite fly as much as it plummeted back in to the crowd.

A sea of blood, guts, wings, feathers and media storm erupted.

“Alice Cooper kills chicken and drinks the blood.”

“Satanic Cooper sacrifices animals at live concert.”

“Evil Alice kills animals in frenzied sacrifice in front of baying mob”.

Well, you get the picture.

The rumours that surrounded Cooper and his stage show grew and grew – as rumours are prone to do. Before you knew it, Alice Cooper was the anti-Christ and the children of the world were not safe from the evil he spewed.

Nobody, it would seem, bothered to actually find out much more than that. Especially Mary Whitehouse the veteran ‘media standards and decency’ campaigner who busied herself by deciding on our behalf what we should and should not be allowed to see, think or do.

When it was announced that Alice Cooper would be bringing his shock-fest to the UK, Whitehouse went in to overdrive.

She lobbied MPs. Some of them supported her. In fact one MP, Leo Abse objected to Cooper’s show so much, he accused him “peddling the culture of a concentration camp.” Strong stuff.

The frenzy surrounding the most villainous man in music built and built.

Watching this all unfold were, basically, three groups;

1) The outraged.

2) The sensible.

3) The really, really, really, really, really EXCITED!

Whitehouse did not manage to ‘ban’ Cooper from bringing his show to the UK. Nor did the MPs, he was after all a singer, not a criminal.

Given the mass hysteria surrounding rock’s baddest of the bad, which of the following scenarios do you think played out upon his eventual landing on UK soil?

1) The public shunned the morally corrupt singer and sent him packing where he would later fade in to obscurity

2) Without doing a SINGLE stroke of his own PR, he sold Wembley Stadium out TWO nights in a row

???

Cooper’s sold out Wembley shows elevated his career to a new high. He is still going (very) strong to this day.

Had Mary Whitehouse actually met him before making her judgement, she’d discover that Alice Cooper is a devoted family man, born again Christian, keen golfer and one of the GREATEST showmen alive. The Alice Cooper show is a morality play. It’s a character showing, teaching, if you like, that if you do bad things, then bad things happen to you. Alice – the character – never ‘gets away’ with anything. It’s more Shakespeare than Satanism. In fact, I’ve found myself streaming out of Alice Cooper concerts (I’ve been to many. Many, many!) to sometimes overhear the dissefected youth of the day say “Well the music was great, but I thought it’d be all Satanic and stuff.” The greatest disappointment Mary and Leo would have found at an Alice Cooper gig is the sheer lack of the demonic, satanic elements and lack of corruption of the young, impressionable audience – the same young, impressionable audience who Mary and Leo DROVE to the show with their ill informed hype and tittle tattle.

Ken Baker has done the same job for the Pit Bull.

He’s made a dog breed that is owned and loved by millions the ‘poster child’ of canine badness. He’s made the breed the 1972 version of Alice Cooper.

Only there’s one big difference, Alice Cooper sent Mary Whitehouse a bouquet of flowers every year up until her death, so grateful was he for the career platform she built for him. I’m fairly sure the countless owners and dogs who’s lives have been wrecked by Baker’s 1991 act will not feel such affection for him.

Alice Cooper solid rock foundation – >

Anti BSL clothing

An Alice Cooper inspired musical dedication to Lord Baker of Dorking

What if the dog’s only ‘function’ is to be a companion, a lap-dwelling bundle of sycophancy and amusement? If the dog is incapable of working, is it fit for function? Surely, it is?

So, given the function of the average pet dog is to provide companionship, how do we define fit for function in the dog as a species rather than on a breed by breed basis? How about this; if a dog would be physically incapable of surviving on its own due to any man-made limitations, it is NOT fit for function.

Let’s define the terms:

We’re not talking about whether dog originally bred in Mexico could survive an Alaskan winter.
We’re not measuring whether a Pug could pull down a lion.

We simply have to ask, whether our dog has retained the basic functionality of being able to thrive were it ever required to do so, outside of the domestic environment.

How would yours fair?

–Edit: Because some people are easily confused. I have not advocated domestic dogs be sent in to the wild, I merely ask the question ‘could it survive with the equipment it has’. If the answer is no, is that not a sad indictment? I happen to think one of my dogs ‘could’ catch a wild animal, and the other couldn’t – not because she doesn’t have the physical attributes, but because she’s an idiot.  It’s a question of a physical nature, not a mental one.

So far, the feedback has been:

Most Terrier owners say yes.
Most sight hound owners say, definitely.
Some gundog owners say yes, some feel their dog doesn’t have the mental ability to find their own food (see my edit above)