A bit about me to start with

I'm a French dog, a bordaire collee. I was born in the Cantal region of the Auvergne and for the first two years of my life, I had a very good home. I was well cared for, well trained, beautifully kept, with a clean, shiny coat and thought I had a pretty good life.

Then my owners had a baby. Suddenly everything changed. They said I was "trop vif" (too lively). And before I knew what was happening, I was sent off to the dog's home at a place called Gerzat. It was terrible. I'm only quite small for a bordaire collee and I was stuck in a cage with another dog, surrounded by yet more dogs who barked all the time and I was terrified.

People kept coming and staring at me through the bars and I was so frightened I barked and barked at them until they went away. And so I stayed in my cage for what seemed like forever and I thought my world had come to an end.

Then one day two ladies came walking past. One was speaking French with a strange accent. They looked at me but I barked and snarled as usual and they went on by. They went to talk to the lady in charge and after a while, she brought them across to see me. She told them I wasn't a bad dog, just a very frightened one who was terrified by being in the cage, and said if they took me out of the cage they would see for themselves what I was really like.

The one with the funny accent I found out afterwards she is Heenglish) got a lead and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. Is the Pope a Catholic? Of course I did! Anything to get away from that place. So we went for a walk, and the funny accent person was saying she was very sad after her last dog died and wanted another one but didn't want another bordaire collee, and not a male, and not more than a year old, and not black and white.

So I had to turn on all my Gallic charm because I understood that she might just take me away from that terrible place and give me my own proper home again. And that's just what she did. And it's wonderful. I can't tell you how happy I am again.

But one day she was looking at a film on her computer and it was making her cry. It was this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJ5kYIl82Q and it was about something called puppy farming. It was absolutely terrible and made me realise that although the dog's home was bad, it was nothing in comparison to what happens to these poor dogs.

So I thought that maybe if I wrote about it, more people would learn about it and might try to do something about it. How can humans hope ever to treat each other with compassion and respect if they can do something as awful as that to dogs? And what kind of a world is it to bring up children if people think that just because they want something, they have to right to have it with no thought about what happens to make it available to them.

I'm not just going to write about the terrible things in life, there are just too many of them. And my life now is very happy. I'll tell you all about my weekly camping trips, with my very own tent to match my mistress's. And all the good things I have now. But first I'd like to tell you all about the shameful thing that is puppy farming and I hope you'll all find out more about it and try to do something to stop it.

You'll find me on Twitter as @banpuppyfarming and you'll find out a lot more at #banpuppyfarming. It's terrible, the images are dreadful. But only if decent people like you watch them then demand that this awful trade is stopped can we all make the world a better place.

Ci