Agenda item

Proposed by:             Councillor Dilwar Ali

Seconded by:           Councillor Norma Mackie

Background

Cardiff is known to be a dog loving city and many of our residents pay large sums of money for the puppy of their choice, sometimes thousands of pounds. This love of dogs is being abused by illegal puppy farm owners who keep breeding dogs in very poor conditions and continually breed them. They also produce puppies who in poor health, that are taken from their mothers too early, often causing them to have problems socialising. They cost their new owners large sums in vets bills that often still end in the pup dying or being unmanageable. Lucy was one of these breeding dogs who was rescued from a puppy farm and Lucy’s Law is a campaign to ban the third-party sales of pups to help stop this.

Cardiff Dogs Home, a service run by Cardiff Council, is having to take in some of these pups to try and rehome them. We know that areas in West Wales have an increasing number of illegal puppy farms using third parties to sell the pups and that pups are sold in Cardiff.

The UK Government have agreed to ban third party sales of puppies in England and three Assembly Members are asking the Welsh Government to follow suit as without Lucy’s Law illegal puppy farm breeding dogs and their puppies in Wales will continue to languish behind closed doors, suffering at the hands of people who put profit before animal welfare.

Motion

This Council calls for the Leader of Cardiff Council to write to the Welsh Government, supporting the call for urgent action to ban the third-party sales of puppies.