And they call it puppy love?

My new mistress loves me. She's bought me some smashing toys, and my very own DogBag tent. I've got a Babble Ball which talks to me in heenglish to help me learn it, a Jolly Ball, a Buster Cube and a squeaky purple dinosaur.

But she says she would never have picked me out of a litter of puppies. That's because I've got an undershot jaw which makes me look a bit goofy, my front legs aren't the straightest and she says I've got Hitler's medical condition, whatever that means, although that's now been fixed with an operation. So that set me wondering about how human beans should pick puppies, and where they should get them from.

I've been learning all about what they call puppy farms in the UK and puppy mills in America. I started off by watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJ5kYIl82Q and I couldn't believe my eyes. Why would people do such things to dogs? Why would anyone want to buy a puppy if they knew it started its life like that? And it made me ask, is this legal?

I was quite glad never to have been to UK when I learned it is, in a way. As long as these puppy farms get a licence from their local authority, they are legal. They are supposed to be inspected to make sure they comply with welfare regulations. You can read about them here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/welfare/domestic/

And there are powers to check up on any places that don't have licences. You can read the law on this here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1991/Ukpga_19910064_en_1.htm

There's also a thing called an Animal Welfare charter, which you can read about here: http://www.labouranimalwelfare.org/the-animals-charter/general-principles It sounds marvellous. Except when I looked up how many local authorities had signed up to it, I couldn't find any. The charter actually quotes Mr Gandhi, who must have been a very good human bean. He said:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

So please can anyone tell me why you call Britain Great?

Why are councils allowing such things to happen? I'm a dog, I don't understand it. But people see poor little puppies in pet shops, feel sorry for them, buy them, so the shop orders more from the puppy farms and so it goes on.

It seems to me that two things need to happen as soon as possible:

1. People everywhere need to be educated about these terrible places so they only ever buy puppies from proper breeders. They should go to their homes and see the puppies with their mothers. They should never buy puppies in shops and never, ever buy them on the internet.

2. Councils should be made to enforce the regulations that exist. They should inspect places immediately there is a complaint or even the suspicion of one. And they should use their existing powers to close any places not following the rules. I wonder how many such places could be closed overnight if they did that?

There are a lot of very good human beans trying to do exactly that. If you look on Twitter at the trending topic banpuppyfarming you'll see all the excellent things that are already being done, like Puppy Farm Awareness Day 19th Sept 2009 in Brighton. You can find out about that here http://www.marcthevet.com/june-2009-round-up-join-me-for-the-fight-against-puppy-farming/

But it needs more and more people to know what is going on and join in the campaign to stop it.

I hope you will do that. Don't make me bite you.

Ci