Tonight on TV: Britain's puppy dealers revealed: Panorama

[DogsMightFly]

Tonight at 19:30 on BBC1.

I'm going to have a look, although it will be hard viewing.

Yes agree, I think it will be hard viewing as well.

Watching it now. Totally heartbreaking. How can people do this?
I hope they rot in hell. God I'm so angry.

I'm sobbing, those of dogs 😢😢😢

I'm sickened.

This is so upsetting, forcing myself to watch as needs to be seen, had no idea that licensed premises could be so bad. Those poor shivering dogs .

Gosh, I'm not sure I can watch it, having read this. I would still be dwelling on it a week later , although it's great that these programmes educate and open people's eyes. What is the general gist ... puppy farms?

Watching it now. Totally heartbreaking. How can people do this?

Because people buy them - the only way this wil ever stop is if the market dries up.

People seem blind to the many reasons why buying unregistered/crossbreed puppies is an issue, it is all just seen as snobbery. No, I know it's not ALL of them, but by 'eck it's a lot of them.

If people don't care about the lives the mothers live, you'd think they'd at least care about the cute puppies with problems.

The only good part is that that NI breeder has not had his licence renewed. I assume it won't stop him breeding though .

This is so upsetting, forcing myself to watch as needs to be seen, had no idea that licensed premises could be so bad.

There's a lot of misconceptions about the council licensing scheme, not least that license holders can get away with having dogs in awful conditions.

The vast majority of councils only require a breeder to have one if they're breeding more than four or five litters a year. If a breeder has a license (unless they're governed by one of the few councils that require one for far fewer litters) then it's pretty much a guarantee that they're dodgy as no decent breeder would be churning out that many puppies a year.

Worryingly one of the big charities (I can't remember who off the top of my head) had a campaign a while back warning people against BYBs. Unfortunately they actually recommended looking for licensed breeders which is pretty much advising people to go to puppy farms

Out of interest, are any of the featured farms in Ayrshire, Scotland?

Too many idiots don't really think before buying a pet, wake up one morning and decide they want a puppy so they go on line and buy from the cheapest seller hence all these awful puppy farms. It breaks my heart

Surely people would have the sense to ask for evidence of health checks when spending hundreds on a puppy .

I couldn't watch dieu - but I saw a little bit towards the end when they went out in Scotland with an rspca inspector to a bunch of dumped puppies.....poor little things

I honestly think that people convince themselves that their pup didn't come from one of these places?
The horror will never go away until people stop buying :(

I've not watched it yet; I recorded it, but it sounds like grim viewing :-(

It was awful. Apparently a breeding bitch can make £5k a year in puppies. The guy in Ireland had 300 dogs. That's 300 dogs living in kennels that never get walked or have a normal happy family life. And if the puppies get dumped you can imagine what happens to the bitches when they're too worn out to breed anymore.

Public education is the way forward. Like a pp said, if the market dried up they wouldn't be there. If people could be persuaded that they don't really want to pay hundreds of pounds for some mongrel or dog with no idea how it was bred, it might eventually stop. Why they don't try dogs homes first I will never know. If you want a particular pedigree, fair enough, but if you're prepared to just buy a random puppy no questions asked, why not just adopt one?

Awful, awful. We ended up at a puppy farm when we were looking for a puppy years ago. It was heartbreaking and yet fully licensed by the council. Really hard to walk away.

Yet that was nowhere near the scale of this.

I wonder how several hundred pounds became the accepted going rate for a non KC reg pup. Used to be that the only dogs that were worth anything were pups from good working bitches. If you just wanted a pet it was less than fifty quid or free to good home. I realise that this didn't exactly encourage responsible breeding either but at least it made puppy farming a non viable commercial enterprise. Perhaps the source of those cheap/free pups was mostly accidental matings as more people didn't bother getting bitches spayed and let them roam so that was a losing situation too.