大象传媒

Dog scandal

A dog's life - concerns about puppy sales

In a special edition of Inside Out tackles the men running a trade in sick puppies brought into the North East - and uncovers their connection to the greyhound racing world.

We investigate the pups who are churned out in squalid conditions,
and sold by unscrupulous dealers to unsuspecting dog lovers in the North East of England.

And we ask why are sellers of ill and diseased puppies licensed to operate in an industry that says animal welfare is a top priority.

Animal welfare

At the Port of Larne in Northern Ireland two men from Consett in County Durham are being watched by the USPCA, which looks after animal welfare in Ulster.

This is one of a number of trips they have made here to buy dogs.

The USPCA says inside their van are wire haired dachshund pups, and greyhounds.

One of the men is Darran Green. In 2003 he was banned by the Dog Lovers' Registration Club.

He was also featured in the press - buyers complained he'd been selling sick pups, and making false claims about pedigrees.

The other man is Robert Emberson - Green's stepson.

The same complaints about sick pups and dodgy pedigrees have been made about him.

Port officials allow them to continue their journey. But by the time their pups are sold to buyers in England, they're often in a sorry state.

Puppy horror

Back in Newcastle Inside Out meets a woman who knows first hand just how ill some of the dogs can get.

Sherrie McDougal from Fawdon bought a puppy from Robert Emberson, the younger of the two men.

Sherrie bought a puppy which quickly became ill

Sherrie answered an advert in a local paper and paid almost 拢300 for her dog, Cory.

"She looked like she was dying. It was horrible. Her whole ears were just scabs," she recalls.

The seller was based at a house at Medomsley Road in Consett.

We understand that the RSPCA has received numerous complaints about dogs sold from that address in the last few years while Darran Green and Robert Emberson were operating from there.

Sick dogs

Emberson, Greens' stepson, handled the sale.

He sold Sherrie a sick dog infested with vermin and puss weeping from its eyes.

A visit to the vet showed that the animal had juvenile cellulitis - a rare condition.

And there was another shock for Sherrie.

The dog that she bought thinking it was a boy, turned out to be a bitch.

Despite repeated phone calls, Sherrie could get no response to her calls from Emberson.

Another buyer, Lynn Hopwood, has had nothing but heartache since she paid Emberson more than 拢300 for her dog.

Emberson claimed Carla had been wormed but she hadn't.

He also said she was nine-weeks-old which she wasn't. The vet said that she was no more than five.

It got worse as Lynn explains:

"When I got her and held her in my arms, I could feel her chest wheezing.

"He said she had a cough, and said 'I've got some medicine for her. He went in and came back with a bottle of Veno's - for human beings!

"He said 'give her two spoonfuls a day'. I said 'Veno's'? He said 'Yeah, it's been recommended."

But Lynn's vets said Veno's was no good for dogs, and they found that Carla was seriously ill.

They diagnosed her with pneumonia, and said that they didn't think she'd pull through.

"It's cost us about 拢1,000 on vet's bills alone on Carla," says Lynn.

"They can't see her living past two. She'll be on medication for the rest of her life."

Heart defect

Lynn's experience with Emberson reminded Inside Out of a similar case - of a black Labrador Darran Green sold five years ago.

It also had a cough.

"We only had him for about six hours from start to finish before he died," says a distressed Sarah Thew.

Sick puppy bought from Robert Emberson

Sarah bought the pup from Green at lunchtime. After two trips to the vets that afternoon the dog got worse.

It was going to cost thousands to put him right - Sarah had to have him put down.

Sarah Thew tried numerous times to contact Green. Eventually she got hold of him and he relented and agreed to give her a refund.

Six years later she's still waiting.

Sarah also says that the dog's Irish Kennel Club pedigree certificates were bogus.

Unanswered calls

About a year ago Robert Emberson was also selling dogs from Fencehouses in County Durham.

We met Steve Smelt who bought a Yorkshire Terrier from him - or rather from a woman working with him.

He was also told it was Kennel Club registered.

Steve Smelt asked if he could see the Pedigree papers, but was told by a woman claiming to be Emberson's mother - Heather Green - that there was a problem and that the papers would be posted later.

The papers didn't show up, and his calls went unanswered. So a fortnight later Steve returned to get them.

He met two people fumigating the house - it was piled high with animal excrement and blood. They said Emberson had left without paying the rent.

A notebook was left in the house, listing dog breeds, deposits paid, and more than 40 names, addresses or telephone numbers.

We rang some of them, and found that many of them had complaints - about sick dogs and dodgy pedigrees.

At the track

So, what else do we know about our puppy traders? We went to Brough Park in Newcastle to find out more.

Animal welfare is a big issue here - trainers and handlers are licensed as the industry says they have to be squeaky clean.

We were amazed to find Robert Emberson racing dogs.

It turns out that our dodgy dog dealer is an official dog handler registered by the NGRC, the National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC).

Darran Green, his stepfather, is also an NGRC registered trainer. He has a contract to race dogs with William Hill.

So how can these men work in such a closely regulated industry?

"We don't want anyone in this sport who is licensed by the NGRC who is in breach of the rules of racing and does not care for animal welfare," says the National Greyhound Racing Club.

But if someone has a perfectly good record with greyhounds, and there were concerns about their activities with other animals what would the NGRC do?

"If there's evidence regarding animal welfare that's drawn to our attention that would be investigated. And if that could be investigated and could be substantiated, there's no doubt that licences will be withdrawn from any person who has been granted licences."

Last month news got out that Inside Out was preparing this programme.

Brough Park contacted the 大象传媒 and said Green had resigned as a trainer because of our investigation.

Green told us he was sacked. Since then Green has returned to training, and Brough Park have said he's also been suspended.

So what's going on?

"You can't sack someone who is not employed by you, and all our trainers are self employed. We have a contract for them to provide runners and within that contract, we have a termination clause if we want to stop accepting runners.

"Recently the 大象传媒 brought us some information that led us to believe that Mr Green or an employee of his may have been involved in a business that had welfare issues.

"Now that's obviously of great concern to us as well. I have to state that it had no implications to his activities as a greyhound trainer. In fact inspections of his kennels proved them to be exemplary.

"But if there is a question of any welfare activity at all, then I thought that it was appropriate not to accept any runners from that trainer.

"Until we've seen the programme air, we're not in receipt of the full facts of this case to make a decision over whether or not to accept runners from Mr Green in future." David Hood, Brough Park/William Hill.

Dog problems

Inside Out found no shortage of owners who bought from Green and Emberson, and encountered problems.

Andrew and Jayne Hunt answered an advert in a Middlesbrough paper - the seller was Emberson.

Their took their dog Henry to the vets and found that it was extremely poorly.

Chris Jackson confronts Emberson with claims

The vet said Henry had lung worm, and was two weeks older than Emberson had claimed.

It took Henry months to recover. He died of other causes last year.

The Hunts' distress was compounded by claims they say Emberson had made about Henry having a Kennel Club pedigree.

When they checked it out, the Hunts found that their dog was not Kennel Club registered.

It's illegal to make such a false claim.

But there was another surprise for the Hunts. They also found that Henry had been shipped from Northern Ireland with other dogs in a transit van.

We found that Emberson made at least 12 trips there on Green's ferry account in 2005 despite saying that he has nothing to do with the puppy trade.

Irish worries

The USPCA, Ulster's animal protection society, have some answers to Inside Out's questions.

We visit some dogs who've recently been rescued from a puppy farm. These animals were being kept in deplorable conditions.

The dogs had been wallowing in filth - cleaning up was too costly. They were fed on chopped up calves. Dead pups were left unburied.

The USPCA say they need more powers to stop all this happening:

"The law as it exists at the moment means suffering has to take place before we can remove animals." Stephen Philpott, USPCA.

Regulation of breeders and dealers relies on local councils.

All the USPCA can do is to bring the problems to their attention - it's down to them to enforce it.

We also visit Southern Ireland, the puppy farming capital of Europe.

Dogs are a multi million pound business. And animal welfare specialists say the law's even weaker here.

"We can only act where conditions are extremely bad. There's no legislation specifically governing the practice of dog breeding. It's very frustrating"
Conor Dowling, ISPCA

The Irish government has had a working group looking at changing the law, but what's been happening?

In a statement the government said it, "abhors the mistreatment of animals", and hoped the matter would be "brought to a conclusion as soon as practicable", once public consultation had ended.

But animal welfare groups say that's not soon enough.

Because there's little regulation and pups are so cheap, it makes it economic to transport them all the way from Ireland to the English mainland.

The dogs often pick up some damage especially if they've been packed in a van and spent hours or days on the road.

It's the new owners who bear the costs of neglect.

DEFRA, the department dealing with the care of livestock in England, declined to speak to us.

But in a statement they said in a year's time "new rules" will be introduced requiring all transporters of animals over 65 kilometres "to be authorised" by EU member states.

And the Animal Welfare Bill, will eventually introduce a "new offence" of "failing to provide for the needs of an animal", which should mean action can be taken earlier than now.

But in the meantime businesses, like Green and Emberson's, can carry on, like they have done for years.

And there's little chance they'll be stopped.

Investigating the claims

In the meantime Inside Out decided to track the dog traders in the North East.

We rented a house so we could secretly film a dog transaction.

Inside Out answered an advert for some West Highland Terrier puppies - Emberson said that he would deliver our puppy.

When he arrives, Emberson says that he's bred the puppy himself and claims that it has a pedigree.

When presenter Chris Jackson appears, he asks Emberson about the state of the dogs:

"I'm not selling dogs that's unwell," he says, refuting the claims.

When we probed for answers about pedigree claims and sick puppies, Emberson said, "no comment".

However, he did respond to customer claims that some of the dogs were not Kennel Club registered:

"I don't sell any of me dogs as Kennel Club registered... None of me dogs is Kennel Club registered."

Things then got ugly and Emberson knocked our cameraman to the ground and was trying to smash his camera.

Emberson had to be restrained.

Following the incident we had our puppy checked out by a vet, and found that he's infested with fleas and worms.

We also checked out the certificate which said the breeder was Peter QuinlivERN.

Attack on the 大象传媒 Inside Out TV team

We know that a Peter QuinlivAN at Kilkenny in Ireland has done business with Darran Green, Emberson's step-dad.

We asked if he'd bred our dog. His wife said they were reputable breeders and had last supplied Westie pups to Darran Green three years ago and he still owed them 3,000 Euros.

She said neither Hamish nor any of the dogs on his pedigree were bred by them.

We asked Darran Green and Robert Emberson to be interviewed, but they didn't want to appear.

However, Mr Green pointed out that he had never been convicted on any cruelty charge, and said he hadn't imported puppies for two years.

Both Green and Emberson denied selling sick dogs with bogus pedigrees.

Robert Emberson said that the welfare of his puppies was paramount, and added that he had never bought dogs from puppy farms, and that his puppies were transported properly.

Both men added that they did answer complaints, and Robert said that he was sometimes hard to contact as he had several mobile phones as he had a number of different girlfriends.

Mr Green also said his businesses had been inspected four years ago and were complying with all the regulations.

Rehomed

After treatment from the vet our puppy was re-homed with a West Highland Terrier sanctuary.

He's a lucky dog - he's probably been through a nightmare in his short life, but it's one that could be avoided.

If the law was tightened, the misery caused by men like Robert Emberson and Darran Green could be stopped.

Inside Out has passed this evidence to the police and the RSPCA.

The next time that you buy a puppy, be careful to check out the credentials of who you're buying it from.

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