Would you pay £20,000 for a dog that could barely walk, couldn’t breathe properly, could never give birth naturally and was high likely to suffer from a variety of diseases including severe skin problems?
Plenty did. Enough to net Karl and Victoria Shellard £372,531 and provide them with assets of more than £1m.
The Shellards bred 67 litters over six years, with bitched being inseminated at every season and one bitch being forced to produce 6 litters in just 4 years.
They were fined £19,000 and ordered to pay back illegal earnings of £372,531 and costs of £43,775. That will still leave them pretty well off – and their main crime being considered to be not having a breeding licence.
Judge David Wynn Morgan assuredly missed the point when he told them “You could have run an extremely profitable business if you were properly registered…”
Just look at their dogs in the image here: animals so severely contorted that their shortened lives will be misery even without being forced to breed. Under The Animal Welfare (Breeding of Dogs) (Wales) Regulations 2014 , Condition 3: Health, “The licence holder must take all reasonable steps to protect dogs from pain, suffering, injury and disease.” Well that would rule out the dogs that the Shellards were producing for a start.
Tragically for dogs, the Shellards are the tip of the iceberg and until people stop paying obscene amounts for distorted travesties of dogs, the majority will go unpunished and dogs will yet again suffer.