Britain's Puppy Dealers Exposed BBC Scotland Investigates

This programme contains some scenes viewers might find upsetting.

Tonight, a journey through the ruthless

That's the show bitch being passed over.

We film those at the heart of the supply

You've got a bitch inside, with young

And expose the trade right on our doorstep

We investigate the inner workings of a

How does a partially sighted dog get past the vet

And we ask what we're doing to Britain's favourite

on lack of transparency, deceit, cruelty and

It's early morning at an abandoned fish

factory near the Scottish port of Cairnryan.

A van from Northern Ireland arrives and

Moments later, a car from Coatbridge,

The man on the left, who arrived in the

The supplier has travelled from a puppy farm in

Northern Ireland with a consignment of dogs.

Within an hour, the puppies will be advertised online by

these dealers as pets bred in their family home.

What you're witnessing is part of a new multi-million-pound industry.

A growing and ruthless trade with animal cruelty

Puppies are being bred on a scale never seen before.

New breeds are commanding ever higher prices, with some

I've spent the last six months investigating the

A complex of barns in County Armagh, in

Eric Hale is the biggest licensed dog

His beagles are Kennel Club registered.

They've even qualified for Crufts.

And as I watch him over the next few months, I learn he

is one of Britain's most prolific dog

Hale starts with the night boat to Liverpool.

The following day, he drives round the

country, dropping the dogs off to the

From large-scale sellers, to country lay-by dealers,

We discovered he was licensed for 120

With a puppy farm of that size, it's harder to control

disease, but it's also harder to give each dog

the human attention it needs if it's to be a happy family pet.

have concerns about Hale and his business.

We'd never be allowed to film openly in Hale's

puppy farm, so I have to film at night, when there'd

It's two in the morning and minus-six degrees.

To try and get access to the barns means a long walk

An hour later, and I'm at the puppy farm.

We're filming this using night-vision cameras.

The only way in is through a narrow gap and a

The law requires suitable bedding.

In some runs, there's little or none at

Breeders must allow their dogs to behave

normally and give them relief from boredom.

But some of the behaviour I witness is disturbing to

On the other side, what seems like the

These dogs are either about to give birth or have just

Along another corridor of kennels, I find more pups.

I have to keep reminding myself that this place is

which means it has been inspected by the authorities and

Watching my footage are three of the country's most eminent experts

animal welfare law and canine behaviour.

You're not meant to use sawdust because

The accommodation is barely adequate for

There's not really adequate barriers to prevent

That dog is trying to anaesthetise itself,

essentially, to get out of the environment it finds

No local authority should be licensing these

If they are in there 24/7, then those dogs are

We had watched the farm over several days and saw no sign

of the dogs being routinely taken out of the barns.

In a statement, Eric Hale told us his

kennels met all the requirements for a

His dogs were well socialised, he said, and there was

When they travelled, he would "regularly

It's estimated that more than a third of

all puppies bought today will have come

from puppy farms - both licensed and unlicensed.

Breeders like Hale supply dealers, some of whom also

flout the regulations in the pursuit of profit.

I discover one address Eric Hale often travels to is

on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Here, he delivers in the dead of night.

She has a number of other suppliers, as

on the radar of animal welfare agencies around the

Some dogs she has sold have been sick

And she's been caught trying to smuggle dogs into

Scotland from one of the biggest puppy

farms in the Irish Republic - owned by

I thought Eric Hale's operation was big,

but I am told that Raymond Cullivan's puppy

farm in the Irish Republic dwarfs it.

Again, I choose the timing of my visit

It's the early hours of the morning and

I'm just over the border in County Cavan.

It's minus-three degrees and pitch black.

After a couple of miles' walk across the hills, I arrive.

So loud, the camera's microphone can barely cope.

Puppies from some of these breeds can

fetch up to ?1,000 on the open market.

These pipes are part of a drinking system

normally seen in battery pig farming.

The dogs have to press the spout at the end to get

In other barns, a ramshackle collection of cages.

It's one of the new fashionable crossbreeds.

The pups can sell for more than ?800.

Across the yard is another large barn.

I am totally unprepared for what I find inside.

Some of them are about to give birth.

Some of them have just given birth.

There's one here - I cannot tell you how fresh these

Dogs giving birth in confined spaces,

Little or no ventilation or daylight.

All breaches of animal-welfare legislation in Ireland.

Yet filled with pups, many bound for the UK market.

Water bottles have been drilled through

this bitch in here is having pups now.

This one next door to it has got no heat lamp,

the roof of it is slid over, there's nothing.

It's only contact with the outside

world - literally - is that water bottle here

That means it will have been inspected

I show our panel the footage of the larger barns.

This is a production facility run on an industrial

scale to produce a very valuable commodity.

It is treating dogs as though they were agricultural animals.

I then show them the barn with the illegal growing

Yes, I am appalled, as any responsible dog

The number of boxes there show the scale of the

Have you ever seen anything like that?

I haven't seen anything like that before, no.

This looks like a major supply network

It raises fundamental questions about the

Cavan County Council told us that six

carried out in the last twelve month period.

direct evidence of any welfare problems".

And it was "generally compatible" with the

Neither Raymond Cullivan nor his daughter Lauren

responded to our requests for comment.

One breeding bitch on a puppy farm can

If you have several hundred, as Cullivan does, you

Marc Abraham is a vet and animal welfare campaigner.

lots of dogs is as soon as you increase

the production levels, you're most likely going to get

We see puppies coming in under age, underweight.

We see them suffering from infectious

diseases, and of course you also have behavioural

So this tiny ball of cute fluff is actually a

ticking time-bomb of disease, pain, suffering, and let's

not forget the breeding bitch that it actually was born

But what happens to the puppies next?

Most end up being sold online, by dealers who'll often

do their best to hide where the dogs have come from.

These adverts are all for pups being sold across central Scotland

And every advert implying the dogs have been born and brought up

We make a few appointments to see the pups.

Oh, hi there, can I speak to Kim please?

Interestingly, nearly each and every time we get told to come

That house there in this rather nice housing estate

We send five undercover reporters to pose as

Hiya, have I got the right place for the puggles?

You may remember them from the handover of pups at the abandoned

Their selling techniques are well-rehearsed,

playing perfectly on the customer's emotions.

In each case, we're told the pups have come

I spend months following Dawn and Noel Smyth.

Each week, they get a delivery of pups from their source,

a driver for a puppy farm in Northern Ireland.

This exchange takes place in a backstreet lay-by

Other times, I watch them travel on the ferry as foot passengers,

Asking to see the mother should be one way of proving your pup

But back at their house, and Dawn Smyth is ready with

However, I start to notice some of their adverts state the pups can

Could this be part of a new tactic being used to deceive

This investigator works undercover for animal welfare charities around

the country, including the Ulster Society for

the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Northern Ireland.

What the dog breeders and the dog sellers have

so you have a bitch, a mother dog which looks very

like the similar type of pup which is up for sale in the same

room and it creates the impression that this pup has

come from the mother that's in the room.

Often, it's just a show bitch, which is purely

there to fool the public, the public who are paying cash

for pups, which have come from a puppy farm.

It looks like Noel and Dawn Smyth have bought into this new tactic.

I watch Noel Smyth, a taxi driver, carry this adult Basset hound

from the back of his cab and put it into the supplier's van.

Dawn Smyth had advertised these Bassett pups the previous

So this show bitch was now no longer needed.

Dawn then transfers these white Bichon pups into the boot

The supplier passes an adult Bichon from the van to Noel,

who takes it and puts it into his taxi.

Sure enough, within an hour of that handover, Dawn Smyth posts

It states that mum is their family pet.

We asked Dawn and Noel Smyth for a comment.

Online sellers make up the larger part of the supply chain.

But almost a fifth of all pups are sold through pet shops.

It's the UK's biggest puppy superstore chain.

Branches in Manchester and Leeds, both with an impressive

Michelle and Claudia Williams bought a Norwegian Elkhound puppy, George,

Not long after, a vet diagnosed him with a terminal kidney disease.

You asked, why, didn't you, and she said "It's more

than likely genetic, inherited from his mum and dad."

I didn't think it would happen so fast.

I was working, and she rang me up, and she said, "Mam, he's dying."

And I said "Come on, we need to take him now."

George had just turned one when he was put to sleep.

Do you remember the name of the breeder?

He owned this puppy farm we had filmed in Northern Ireland.

The one the experts said shouldn't be licensed.

These are Norwegian Elkhounds, the same breed as George was.

I receive a phone call from someone who wants to talk to me

about their time working for the company.

This woman worked for Dogs 4 Us for four years,

working her way up to deputy store manager, leaving in 2012.

She told me the store would take in pups from dealers

at younger than eight weeks, too young to be transported

How young could some of them then be?

Way too young.

I've seen some Shih Tzus that looked about five weeks,

then you're having to, sort of, give them some Lactol

as well, to try and wean them yourself in kennels.

She said some pups arrived with parvo virus.

Potentially fatal, and often found in puppy farms.

Many a times, I've sat in the back cradling a dog

Nicola Robinson had an acrimonious departure from Dogs 4 Us

She admits assaulting a colleague as she walked out.

She was angered, she says, by the way the business

She showed me files of customer complaints, which she had kept

They showed dogs were sold, which became sick or died.

This one sold as an American cocker spaniel.

Oh, they sold a Bichon Frise that wasn't a Bichon Frise.

Lameness, hip dysplasia, oh, there's loads.

Look there's loads, heart murmur, hip dysplasia,

So that was a common thing?

how does a partially sighted dog get past the vet checks?

On this web page, Dogs 4 Us claims all its pedigree puppies "come

from licensed breeders and are completely traceable".

Last year, actress Chelsee Healey bought Reggie for ?900 from Dogs 4

This is really bad, but I didn't even give it a second thought.

I should have looked into it a little bit more but,

It never even crossed my mind to ask where his mum was.

Chelsee asks me to try and find out where Reggie came from.

His paperwork lists the breeder at an address in North Wales.

There's also no breeding licence for that address.

Remember, on the web page, Dogs 4 Us says all its breeders

We put the allegations to Dogs 4 Us about the sale of sick dogs,

It says the allegations are based on testimony from "a disgruntled

ex-employee", who was dishonest, had a criminal record and "harboured

About Reggie's missing breeder, it says that whilst the "majority

of breeders are licensed", it is allowed to deal

But, say Dogs 4 Us, all are still "traceable".

I've spent months investigating the puppy trade, and have been

shocked by the conditions I've witnessed in licensed puppy farms,

and by the extent of deception used by some dealers.

It's clear the authorities are struggling to keep up.

As my investigation closes, I go on a call-out with an officer

from the animal welfare charity, the Scottish SPCA.

He's been told that something has been spotted

I am not prepared for what I am about to see.

You may find some of this footage distressing.

Dumped by a dog dealer when he realised they were either

And realise that, actually, buying these dogs is feeding the trade.

So you may be rescuing one dog, but what you are doing

is you are causing misery for the next litter.

If you are looking for any evidence of the consequences of the puppy

trade, look no further, this is it four dead pups,

In 2016, we should be better than this.

We shouldn't be farming dogs on a mass scale.

They feel pain, they feel suffering, they feel fear.

The only people benefiting are the irresponsible breeders