"This programme contains some scenes some viewers may find upsetting." "A journey through the ruthless world of the dog trade." "WHISPERS:" "That's a show bitch being passed over." "I can't believe that!" "We film those at the heart of the supply chain." "CONSTANT BARKING" "You've got a bitch inside with young pups." "It's inhumane." "And expose the trade right on our doorstep." "Here's the puppy." "We investigate the inner workings of a multimillion-pound industry." "How does a partially-sighted dog get past the vet checks?" "You tell me." "And we ask what we're doing to Britain's favourite pet." "This is an industry built on lack of transparency, deceit, cruelty and animal suffering." "It's early morning at an abandoned fish factory near the Scottish port of Cairnryan." "A van from Northern Ireland arrives and parks up." "Moments later, a car from Coatbridge, near Glasgow, follows suit." "This woman is a dog dealer." "WOMAN LAUGHS" "The man on the left, who arrived in the van, is her supplier." "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, multimillion-pound industry." "A growing and ruthless trade with animal cruelty at the heart of it." "Puppies are being bred on a scale never seen before." "New breeds are commanding ever-higher prices, with some pups costing upwards of £1,000." "I've spent the last six months investigating the darker side of the trade." "My investigation begins here, a complex of barns in County Armagh in Northern Ireland." "The owner has just arrived." "Eric Hale is the biggest licensed dog breeder in this part of the country." "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's one of Britain's most prolific dog dealers." "Every week, he loads his van with crate after crate...after crate of pups." "A 20-hour journey begins." "Hale starts with the night boat to Liverpool." "The following day, he drives around the country, dropping the dogs off to the next link in the supply chain." "From large-scale sellers to country lay-by dealers," "Hale delivers to all." "Eric Hale is in the big league." "We discovered he was licensed for 120 breeding bitches." "Now, 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." "I hear some animal welfare agencies have concerns about Hale and his business." "I want to take a closer look." "We'd never be allowed to film openly in Hale's puppy farm, so I film at night, when there'd be least chance of being spotted." "It's two in the morning and minus six degrees." "To try and get access to the barns means a long walk over the hills in the dark." "An hour later, and I'm at the puppy farm." "We're filming this using night-vision cameras." "FRENETIC BARKING" "The doors are locked." "The only way in is through a narrow gap and a long drop down into the kennels." "Inside, the dogs." "FRENETIC BARKING" "The law requires suitable bedding." "In some runs, there's little, or none at all." "Breeders must allow their dogs to behave normally and give them relief from boredom." "But some of the behaviour I witnessed is disturbing to watch." "There's another high wall." "On the other side, what seems like the maternity wing." "These dogs are either about to give birth, or have just done so." "Along another corridor of kennels, I find more pups." "I have to keep reminding myself that this place is licensed, which means it's been inspected by the authorities and what they found, deemed appropriate." "Watching my footage are three of the country's most eminent experts in veterinary medicine, animal welfare law and canine behaviour." "What's that on the floor - sawdust?" "Yep." "You're not meant to use sawdust because it gets into water and food." "This accommodation is barely adequate for overnight." "There's not really adequate barriers to prevent disease." "That dog is trying to anaesthetise itself, essentially, to get out of the environment it finds itself in and cannot escape from." "No local authority should be licensing these sort of conditions." "If they're in there 24/7, then those dogs are seriously deprived." "They're basically in jail." "We've 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 breeding establishment"." "His dogs were "well socialised", he said, and there was plenty of bedding of "various types"." "When they travelled, he would" ""regularly check, feed and water" the dogs." "It's estimated that more than a third of all puppies bought today will have come from puppy farms, both licensed and unlicensed." "Now, 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." "It's the home of this woman, Lauren Cullivan, a licensed dog seller." "She has a number of other suppliers, as well as Eric Hale." "I discover that Lauren Cullivan is on the radar of animal welfare agencies across the country." "And she's been caught trying to smuggle dogs into Scotland from one of the biggest puppy farms in the Irish Republic, owned by her father." "but I'm told that Raymond Cullivan's puppy farm in the Irish Republic dwarfs it." "Again, I choose the timing of my visit very carefully." "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." "It's too dangerous to go on my own." "The men with me are security." "After a couple of miles' walk across the hills, I arrive." "It's a massive complex of barns." "Inside the first barn, scores of dogs." "FRENETIC BARKING" "And a wall of noise." "So loud, the camera's microphone can barely cope." "DISCORDANT DIN" "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 water." "In other barns, a ramshackle collection of cages." "Barn after barn... ..cage...after cage." "This is a puggle." "It's one of the new fashionable crossbreeds." "The pups can sell for more than £800." "Across the yard is another large barn." "I'm totally unprepared for what I find inside." "SHE GASPS" "These boxes are filled with dogs." "Some of them are about to give birth, some have just given birth." "There's one here..." "I cannot tell you how fresh these dogs are." "They are this big." "These boxes are illegal." "Dogs giving birth in confined spaces, unable to move around freely." "No space away from the pups." "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 the sides of the boxes." "That heat lamp is only on because this bitch 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." "There are no air holes." "It's only contact with the outside world, literally, is that water bottle here going right into the side of this." "We leave everything as we find it." "This place is licensed." "That means it will have been inspected and declared fit for purpose." "I show our panel the footage of the larger barns." "This is a production facility, um...run on an industrial scale to produce a very valuable commodity." "It's treating dogs as though they were agricultural animals." "I then show them the barn with the illegal growing boxes." "You've gone quiet." "Hm!" "Yes, I'm appalled, as any responsible dog owner would be, I think." "A number of boxes there show the scale of the operation." "Have you ever seen anything like that?" "I haven't seen anything like that before, no." "It's not just the odd one or two, this looks like a major supply network that you're filming here." "It raises fundamental questions about the local authority's role." "I would suggest that it's failing." "Cavan County Council told us that "six inspections" of the business had been carried out in the last "12-month period"." "They had "..not encountered any direct evidence" ""of any welfare problems"" "and it was "generally compatible" with the current legislation." "Neither Raymond Cullivan, nor his daughter, Lauren, responded to our requests for comment." "One breeding bitch on a puppy farm can produce £5,000-worth of pups a year." "If you have several hundred, as Cullivan does, you could be earning big money." "But it comes at a cost." "Marc Abraham is a vet and animal welfare campaigner." "The problem with producing lots and lots of dogs is as soon as you increase the production levels, you're most likely going to get a reduction in welfare standards." "We see puppies coming in underage, underweight, we see them suffering from infectious diseases and, of course, you also have behavioural problems." "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 it actually was born from." "But what happens to the puppies next?" "Most end up being sold online by dealers who often do their best to hide where the dogs have come from." "These adverts are all for pups being sold across Central Scotland by different dealers." "There's Steph and Kim," "Don and Megan, D and Dawn." "Most dogs costing upwards of £400." "And every advert implying the dogs have been born and brought up in a family home." "We make a few appointments to see the pups." "Interestingly, nearly each and every time, we're told to come to the same address." "Which is that house over there, in this rather nice housing estate on the outskirts of Glasgow." "We sent five undercover reporters to pose as separate potential buyers." "This is Noel Smith." "And this is his wife, Dawn." "You may remember them for the handover of pups at the abandoned fish factory." "Their selling techniques are well rehearsed, playing perfectly on the customer's emotions." "In each case, we're told the pups have come from a family home." "But have they?" "I spend months following Dawn and Noel Smith." "Each week, they get a delivery of pups from their source, a driver for a puppy farm in Northern Ireland." "BARKING" "The handovers vary." "This exchange takes place in a backstreet lay-by at Belfast Docks." "Other times, I watch them travel on the ferry as foot passengers, returning with pups in carriers." "Asking to see the mother should be one way of proving your pup isn't from a puppy farm." "But back at their house, and Dawn Smith is ready with an answer for our undercover team." "However, I start to notice some of their adverts state the pups" "CAN be seen with their mum." "Could this be part of a new tactic being used to deceive the more careful customer?" "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 decided to do now is, they get a show bitch." "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 not." "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's all just one big lie?" "It's a deception." "It looks like Noel and Dawn Smith have bought into this new tactic." "I watch Noel Smith, a taxi driver, carry this adult Basset Hound from the back of his cab and put it into the supplier's van." "Dawn Smith had advertised these Basset pups the previous week and all were sold, so this show bitch was now no longer needed." "Dawn transfers these white Bichon pups into the boot of the taxi." "The supplier passes an adult Bichon from the van to Noel..." "..who takes it and puts it into his cab." "It's their new show bitch." "Sure enough, within an hour of that handover," "Dawn Smith posts this advert online." "It states that mum is their family pet." "Their deception is complete." "We asked Dawn and Noel Smith for a comment." "They didn't respond." "Online sellers make up the larger part of the supply chain, but almost a fifth of all pups are sold through pet shops." "This is Dogs 4 Us." "It's the UK's biggest puppy superstore chain, with branches in Manchester and Leeds." "Both with an impressive celebrity clientele." "Michelle and Claudia Williams bought a Norwegian Elkhound puppy, George, from Dogs 4 Us last year for £575." "Not long after, a vet diagnosed him with a terminal kidney disease." "You asked why, didn't you?" "Why's he got this?" "And she said it's more than likely genetic, inherited from his mum and dad, mum or dad." "I didn't think it would happen so fast." "I was working and she rang me and she said, "Mam, he's dying"." "And I said, "Come on, we need to take him now"." "Didn't I?" "She said, "No, Mam", didn't you?" ""No." I'll never forget that." "Because I could see this pain." "And, um..." "And in the end, you agreed, didn't you?" "George had just turned one when he was put to sleep." "Do you remember the name of the breeder?" "It was Eric..." "Eric Hale." "Yeah?" "Is that right, yeah?" "That was it, wasn't it?" "Yeah." "Eric Hale." "Remember him?" "He owned this puppy farm we filmed in Northern Ireland." "The one the experts said shouldn't be licensed." "These are Norwegian Elkhounds, the same breed as George was." "Hale is a supplier to Dogs 4 Us and he has been for years." "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 under UK law." "How young could some of them be?" "Way too young." "Way too young." "No teeth." "No teeth." "I've seen some Shih Tzus that looked about five weeks." "And then you're having to give them some Lactol, as well, to try and wean them yourself in kennels." "She said some pups arrived with Parvovirus, potentially fatal and often found in puppy farms." "Many a times I've sat in the back cradling a dog while the dog's dying." "Nicola Robinson had an acrimonious departure from Dogs 4 Us four years ago." "She admits assaulting a colleague as she walked out." "She was angered, she says, by the way the business was operating." "She showed me files of customer complaints which she'd kept from during her time there." "They showed dogs were sold which became sick or died and crossbreeds sold as pedigrees." "This one, "Sold as an American cocker spaniel"." "What's this one?" "Um..." "Oh, they sold a Bichon Frise that wasn't a Bichon Frise." "Lameness, hip dysplasia..." "There's loads!" "Heart murmur." "A lot of heart murmurs." "Hip dysplasia." "Hip dysplasia." "Hip dysplasia!" "Oh, my goodness!" "So, that was a common thing?" "Yeah." "Partially-sighted cocker spaniel." "How does a partially-sighted dog get past the vet checks?" "You tell me." "On this web page, Dogs 4 Us claims all its pedigree puppies come from licensed breeders and are completely traceable." "But is this actually the case?" "Last year, actress Chelsee Healey bought Reggie for £900 from Dogs 4 Us." "Where did you think he'd come from?" "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, I mean, I just didn't." "It never even crossed my mind to ask where his mum was, no." "Chelsee asks me to try and find out where Reggie came from." "Reg?" "Reggie?" "His paperwork lists the breeder at an address in north Wales." "But no-one of that name lives here." "I ask the council." "There's also no breeding licence for that address." "Remember, on the web page, Dogs 4 Us says all its breeders are licensed and traceable." "We put the allegations to Dogs 4 Us about the sale of sick dogs and crossbreeds sold as pedigrees." "It says the allegations are based on testimony from "a disgruntled ex-employee"" "who was dishonest, had a criminal record and "harboured a grudge" against the company." "About Reggie's missing breeder, it says that whilst the "majority of breeders are licensed"" "it is allowed to deal with some who aren't." "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 at the side of the road." "I'm not prepared for what I'm about to see." "You may find some of this footage distressing." "These pups are just weeks old, dumped by a dog dealer when he realised they were either dead, or dying." "I just wish people could see this and realise that actually buying these dogs is feeding the trade." "You may be rescuing one dog, but what you're doing is causing misery for the next litter." "If you're looking for any evidence of the consequences of the puppy trade, look no further, this is it." "Four dead pups at the side of the road." "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." "are the irresponsible breeders and the dog dealers." "Soak up the atmosphere at the most famous flower show in the world." "Join the team for daily coverage from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016." "But can this experiment transform their unhealthy lifestyles?"