‘Devastating someone has taken them’ BEWARE OF THE DOGNAPPERS
Armed raids on homes. Puppies stolen from kennels. Pets snatched from parks, gardens and outside shops. As the price of pedigree breeds soared in lockdown, how ruthless gangs sparked a chilling – and heartbreaking – crimewave
VERONICA Martin knew there was something wrong the moment she reached the kennel door. ‘The bolts hadn’t been slid across,’ she says. ‘I thought, “That’s odd. Surely I bolted the doors last night”.’ It was just after 7.30am last Saturday when Mrs Martin, who has been breeding labradors for more than 30 years, went to feed her latest litter of 12 seven-week-old black labs with their customary morning porridge.
‘I went in and immediately thought, that black mass isn’t big enough. I counted and there were only eight puppies there. I was shouting, “Puppies, where are you hiding?”
‘But labrador puppies will eat you alive when they want their breakfast. There’s no chance that four of them would be hiding. And that’s when the penny dropped that they’d been stolen.’
The theft of the four puppies – so far still missing – from the farm near Galston, Ayrshire, Mrs Martin runs with her husband may be one of the more audacious dog thefts in Scotland in recent months but it is far from the only one.
Dognapping is on the rise across the country. In recent months dogs have been taken from gardens, from owners walking their dogs in the park and even by gangs of armed men breaking into houses.
DogLost, a charity run by volunteers that reunites dogs with their owners, says it has seen reports of thefts across the UK rise by 170 per cent in the past year from 172 dogs in 2019 to 465 in 2020.
Altogether an estimated 2,438 dogs were reported stolen to police in the UK last year – the equivalent of seven a day – and a rise of 19 per cent on the previous year. The situation is now so critical that just this week a national pet theft taskforce was established, involving officials from the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The Government is also looking to introduce a ban on cash sales of pets in an attempt to crack down on the phenomenon.
But it may not be enough. When the first lockdown hit last March, many people stuck at home decided to get a pet for company.
Online sales of puppies boomed and, as the pandemic continued, prices rose. Now, as puppies become increasingly lucrative, criminals intent on stealing beloved family pets are becoming steadily more professional.
In February, reports were made of dog-nappers posing as SSPCA inspectors in Perth and Kinross in order to try to remove dogs from homes. Three weeks ago in Stirling, a pregnant shih-tzu chihuahua cross was stolen while out for a walk, and the owner received an anonymous call offering to return the dog for £5,000. Several days later it was retrieved hundreds of miles away in Manchester.
Perhaps most bizarrely of all, a veterinary clinic in Bearsden, near Glasgow, recently warned its clients about two men and two women pretending to work for gas and electricity firms who would knock on doors, check if there were pets, then put cable ties on lamp posts beside the house to mark them as dog owners so they could later go back and steal them.
‘There is no doubt that over the past six to 12 months there has been a significant rise in the number of suspected stolen dogs,’ says Simon Powell, communications manager for Animal Search UK, the country’s biggest missing pet organisation.
‘The amount which are being taken either via opportunist thieves or organised gangs definitely appears to have risen and that’s mainly due to the lockdown.
‘Lots more people are working from home and they’ve seen it as an opportunity to get a puppy because they’ve got time to train it and spend time with it. The issue is that the rise in the number of people getting dogs has created a supply and demand problem.’
The price of a puppy has certainly shot up since the start of the pandemic. The average cost reportedly reached almost £1,900 last year, up from £888 in 2019. Some specialist breeds change hands for much more. Wire-haired dachshunds for example, which would have cost less than £1,000 in 2019, are now priced at up to £4,500.
French bulldogs – the breed owned by Lady Gaga, whose dog walker was shot and injured in Los Angeles while thieves stole two of her three dogs (they were later recovered) – which before the pandemic would sell for around £700 to £1,000, can cost up to £5,000.
‘The demand for pups since Covid came in is huge, and there simply isn’t the amount of puppies to satisfy demand,’ says Mike Flynn, chief superintendent of the SSPCA. ‘That’s what’s driving this.
These people aren’t stealing dogs for themselves. Dogs tend to be stolen for immediate resale, or it’s a pedigree dog and the thieves think they can breed from it.’
Dogs are suddenly big business, and not everyone is willing to go along the old-fashioned breeding route to make it pay. Indeed, some of the thieves aren’t interested in keeping the dogs at all.
‘We’ve started to see a trend where dogs will go missing from the garden or during a walk, and the owners will immediately post on social media saying my dog’s gone missing and there’s a reward,’ says Mr Powell. ‘Someone will get in touch anonymously and say we can get your dog back, give us a reward of £500 or £1,000. The dog has been missing for less than 24 hours and by exploiting the emotions of a desperate dog owner they’ve made a fistful of cash. To the criminals it’s a good day’s work and remarkably easy money.’
Others stake out areas to find out what breeds are available.
‘We’ve heard stories of houses being marked with a tag on a gate post or a lamp post, perhaps just a small blue fleck of paint that marks the home out as being occupied by
‘New market in dogs being stolen to order’
‘Opportunist thieves... or organised gangs’
a certain breed,’ says Mr Powell. ‘There is no doubt at all that there is a new market in terms of dogs being stolen to order.’
Some of the thefts have been on an industrial scale. In January, police in Wales returned nearly 30 dogs to their rightful owners after officers found 80 animals at a property in Carmarthenshire. In a raid in Essex last Friday, 37 dogs, including eight puppies, were seized by police near Colchester.
Others have turned to violence. Just this week, an American bulldog puppy was stolen in an armed robbery in Glasgow, when three men broke into a property and threatened the homeowner with a knife. The men, wearing balaclavas, were last seen making off with the nine-week-old pup before it was later found abandoned by the side of a road.
In February, a man walking his dog was assaulted by two men near Bothwell castle, Lanarkshire, who tried to steal his dog, while a woman was targeted while walking her Labrador over a bridge in Glasgow’s south side.
Further afield, 17-year-old Cerys Fleet was attacked one evening in March after going for a run in
St Martins, Shropshire, with her husky Molly wearing a lead attached to a body belt on her waist. She was attacked from behind and wrestled to the ground, but managed to run away with the dog still in tow. At home she discovered her clothing had been slashed, suggesting the attacker had use a knife to try to cut the dog lead from her belt.
‘Disturbingly, a lot of the recent reports have involved violence,’ says Mr Flynn. ‘People are getting dragged off their feet and then seeing their dog disappear.’
Although there was no violence involved in the case of the four stolen labrador puppies – the thieves seemingly came in the night and took them away – the Martins called the police as soon as they discovered the theft and put the word out on social media.
But so far there have been few clues. The worst thing about it, says Mrs Martin, is that the puppies were all due to go to their new homes this weekend.
‘I had four families to ring to say that their puppies had been stolen. One gentleman started crying. We work from a waiting list and he had been waiting for over a year,’ she says.
‘We’ve had an awful lot of information sent to us, usually puppies being advertised on Pets4Homes or Gumtree but, so far, it hasn’t panned out. I’ve been able to look at the pictures and say no, those are definitely not our puppies.’
One of the fears is that they could have been taken to a puppy farm, where, as soon as they are old enough, they will be forced to start churning out puppies themselves, often in unsanitary conditions.
The SSPCA has launched a number of recent investigations into puppy farming. Last November, more than 60 dogs and cats were seized by the charity from a puppy farm in Perthshire after being discovered in appalling conditions. Three pregnant dogs were among the animals rescued from the property, along with three litters of puppies.
Some were living in outdoor enclosures without light or flooring, while others had been completely exposed to wind and rain and were soaked through when inspectors arrived. An investigation has been launched.
Mr Flynn says that innocent buyers can be easily taken in, believing they are buying a healthy puppy instead of one that has actually been born on a puppy farm, and may well develop behavioural or medical issues.
‘Sometimes, the first time these puppies have human contact is when they’re taken to their owners at seven or eight weeks,’ says Mr Flynn. ‘That can lead to serious psychological issues.’
In December, one heartbroken Scots family bought what they believed to be a Jack Russell puppy for £920 after seeing an advert on Gumtree. Only 45 minutes after making the call, a man arrived at their home with the dog.
Although the family could clearly see something about the puppy wasn’t right, they feared what would happen to him if they gave him back.
The puppy, which turned out to be a four-week-old Border collie who had become unwell after being taken from his mother too early, died just a few days later. The vaccination papers the seller handed over turned out to be false.
‘Some sellers have been using Covid as an excuse to be unscrupulous,’ says Mr Flynn, who believes it has never been easier to sell on a stolen or farmed puppy.
‘We always tell people not to buy a puppy unless you can see them with their mother. But the pandemic has given sellers a reason not to do that.
‘You’d be amazed at the number of people who say they paid £2,000 for a puppy and when you ask them where they bought it from they say they picked it up from a seller in a supermarket car park.’
Unfortunately, while demand remains high, the market for stolen puppies will remain. ‘This is not going away any time soon,’ says Mr Flynn. ‘If there’s money to be made, someone’s going to do it.’
Along with the latest government moves to ban the use of cash to buy animals, pet organisations have issued a raft of advice on how to keep dogs safe. ‘You must make sure you’ve got them microchipped,’ says Mr Powell.
‘Stay aware when you walk your dog. If you see anyone acting strangely or asking odd questions then flag that up across your community.
‘It’s also a good idea to train your dog so their recall is for your attention and for nobody else.
‘Don’t tie your dog up outside a shop, even for a minute. And make sure you take clear photographs of your dog, so that if they do go missing, you have recognisable pictures that can be used to help find them.’
Back at the Martins’ farm, the worry remains over where the puppies have gone, and, upsettingly, how they are being treated.
‘Are they locked in a car boot? Are they in a cage? Have they had their porridge for breakfast?’ asks Mrs Martin.
‘It’s devastating knowing someone has taken them. I keep thinking about where they might be.’