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PHONE DIALS Police, what's your emergency?

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we explore, for the first time, their investigations...

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..and the evidence that's put some of the UK's most dangerous

criminals behind bars.

They look clever.

And they're dangerous.

Britain is a nation of animal lovers, and dogs are among our firm

favourites as pets.

But not all dogs start their lives in wonderful, warm family homes.

The dogs were living in a hellhole.

That's about the only way I could describe it.

It was vast amounts of dogs being kept in a house.

It was just an awful, awful sight.

Many dogs are bred or stolen by criminal gangs who care nothing

for the animal's health and well-being.

At the end of the day, this is a business and vast sums of money

are made breeding dogs.

And it's big business.

It's estimated the market for illegally traded puppies

in the UK can be worth up to £100 million a year.

Sadly, we've seen that with the trade in puppies that criminal

gangs can make far more money from this than trading in other

illicit commodities, such as drugs and guns.

And the organisation that goes behind the criminal element

of running a poppy operation is exactly the same.

OK, we have got two runners now.

They are going to make off in a vehicle, actually.

My name's Ian Muttitt.

I'm the chief inspector for the RSPCA Special Operations Unit

covering the North of England.

The Special Operations Unit remit is to deal with organised animal

cruelty, and that covers a number of different areas of investigations

and cruelty. In particular its animal fighting.

So dog fighting and cock fighting, wildlife persecution and badger

baiting, using dogs.

And then more significantly, over the last few years,

the organised puppy trade, both commercial importation

and the commercial sales around the country.

And at any one time we'll have six or seven investigations

going on nationally.

And as a small team spread across the country,

that is quite time consuming.

It's December 2020, Covid is rampant across the UK and with lockdown

in full force, there is a surge of demand for puppies.

RSPCA Chief Inspector Ian Muttitt receives a disturbing phone call.

So this investigation was initiated through contact from a very astute

veterinary practice member, who identified that an individual

using different aliases and different names, but was the same

person, was bringing in different litters of puppies to be vaccinated.

That aroused suspicions and they contacted us

with their concerns.

For the RSPCA,

a tip off like this can lead to criminal proceedings,

so they need to investigate the claims thoroughly.

So although we're not police officers and we have no powers

in law, our investigators are highly trained and extremely diligent

in considering all the material and investigating

these type of offences.

We work to a high standard to be able to present that evidence

in a format that can be considered by the magistrates and Crown courts,

and that work is hugely time consuming and often quite emotive.

First steps involve working with the vet who'd raised the alarm

to track down the new owners.

The vet practice identified a number of phone numbers and contacts.

Once we had that information, our investigator Kirsty was able

to identify the purchasers and identify then the individuals

that had sold those dogs, the phone numbers and the email addresses

that were used and the locations that they visited

to make those purchases.

A key element for the RSPCA investigators are the puppy's

microchips, which contain a lot of useful data.

Microchips are a legal requirement.

Often we see people not maintaining the details on microchips,

and in any investigation where there's a theft element or dogs

have been stolen, clearly maintaining that microchip

up to date is vital.

So they provide a really great opportunity for investigation

and for following evidential chains to follow up exactly where dogs

have come from, particularly when it comes to import or sale

from one place to another.

And then that allowed us to follow on and do further checks

with partner agencies to draw in the wider links.

Digging deep into the digital dog data, it very soon becomes clear

they've only just scratched the surface.

Whoever is responsible isn't just operating in the UK,

but internationally with other criminals across Europe.

And then we also identified that a number of the individuals

had come through the port at Dover.

And our colleagues at the APHA, the Animal Plant Health Authority,

had stopped two of the individuals bringing in puppies from abroad.

My name is Aled Edwards.

I work for the APHA, the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

My role is the head of field delivery for England.

So there's work done at the ports and points of entry

into the country.

We work through intelligence, all focussed on animal or plant

health or animal welfare.

Animal health and animal welfare is so important to the country

really in terms of the diversity of the country, the economy.

And so I just love what we do and the purpose of our job.

So illegal puppy importation is significant because there's

an opportunity to make money.

There's a huge demand for animals.

And if you think back to 2020 and the pandemic, pet ownership shot

up, prices of animals shot up and supply

couldn't meet the demand.

So we saw a surge in animals being imported and the animals

were cheaper to buy in Europe and therefore people bringing

in and getting higher profits.

So in this particular case, it was Border Force that had stopped

a vehicle and found five puppies in the back of it.

They were not being transported in the greatest conditions.

They were dirty and a fair bit of smell in the cage

they were transported in, and the animals looked smaller

than we would expect them to.

Two of those animals were taken to the vets

because their temperatures were raised, and there was concerns

around their health and their welfare.

By February 2021, a pattern is emerging.

It looks like a serious criminal enterprise requiring

a major investigation.

And so the RSPCA launch Operation Earth.

Following up on their initial enquiries using mobile phone numbers

and email addresses,

the team began a search for puppy sales advertised on the internet.

It was identified that the adverts were taking place on Free Ads,

Preloved, Pets for Homes, Gumtree,

and there was in total 47 phone

numbers used across those adverts and 39 email addresses, which gives

you an idea of the scale of the puppy dealing operation.

So from the adverts and the information and intelligence

that we were receiving, there was a number of family members

that were identified as part of this network.

And at that stage, our investigator Kirsty approached Gwent Police

in order to try and obtain search warrants to further investigate.

But before they can go to the courts to apply, the police and RSPCA

need to build a picture of their main suspects.

So identification of the individuals involved in this puppy dealing gang

was really difficult.

All of the individuals involved

had the same surname.

Often family members were being used.

Family member's email addresses, family member's phone numbers,

all of those related back to the same 11 people.

Alongside sharing the same surname,

many of the 11 suspects share the same first names as well.

Seeing these mass use of names and addresses in order to confuse

enforcement agencies to try and reduce the risk of it identifying

any one individual person.

It's not uncommon.

So trying to establish exactly who was who was really difficult.

The main investigating officer, Kirsty Withnall, hits on a genius

idea to work out how everyone is connected.

It was actually Kirsty.

She knows someone that works for a probate company, and obviously

they offer up this service to identify who was who,

how they were related and then also how the people whose email addresses

or other phone numbers were used were related

to the primary offenders.

Because understanding those links when you're talking

about conspiracy is crucial.

The strategy begins to pay off, and the police secure a number

of search warrants to raid addresses both in Wales and In Hertfordshire.

But while the teams are planning their raids, news comes

in that throws the investigation completely off kilter.

A victim contacted Gwent Police after an attempted break

in and theft of dogs.

As a result, the police pursued offenders using, among other things,

a police helicopter which followed the offenders back to one

of our primary addresses associated with the puppy selling.

It's April 2021, and Gwent Police are trailing some potential

dognappers who appear to be connected to an organised

criminal puppy selling gang.

Police aerial surveillance tracks the suspects to a traveller

site near Newport.

It soon becomes clear the suspects have led them to the heart

of the puppy farming operation.

Tactical Flight Officer Jeff Smith was in the chopper that day.

For this particular case, we were asked to search for a vehicle

involved in a possible dog theft.

A white and black van, which would be quite distinctive.

Person's gone to the front door of a house and overheard on the ring

doorbell then, mentioning dogs in the back garden.

So there's concern that this van was involved in the recent crime

of dog thefts within the area of Newport.

Then we sought all the dogs that were involved in this case.

So to me it looked like various vans parked together and then sort

of back gardens. And within that back garden there were various pens

and lots of dogs within these pens.

I could see about 20 people within the site.

Police officers drove in and two people then decided to run off,

and I wasn't sure what their intention was at the time,

whether it was to warn other people or to escape.

So the fact people are running away from marked police vehicles

is a big giveaway that they're either wanted,

or there's something amiss.

So the priority was to try and get those people as quickly as possible.

But the police and RSPCA have a problem.

They've raided the address three days too early.

IAN:So with any of these types of investigations with multiple

addresses and multiple offenders, they take quite a long period

of time to plan and prepare and to put in place

all of the necessary support in terms of logistics, vehicles,

vets, staff and all of that was planned for later on in that week.

However, this incident brought a lot of that forward.

As a result of this,

we had to request assistance from our local colleague,

Chief Inspector Spence, who has had to react really quickly

and put together a team of officers to attend the location

with the police that day, which is not an easy task.

Chief Inspector Elaine Spence heads to the site to begin gathering

evidence for the puppy farm investigation as part

of Operation Earth, but what she discovers is so shocking

the immediate need becomes the welfare of the dogs.

I had very little information other than the police were in situ

and that there were numerous dogs on site.

So I arrived at the location and met with my colleague.

As we were walking through,

we could see numerous dogs in cages.

They were being kept in makeshift pens.

There was a great deal of faeces around.

Quite a few of the dogs didn't have any water

at all available to them.

In fact, I presented water to some of the dogs and they drank

really quite thirstily, which would indicate to me

that they hadn't been offered water for quite a significant number

of hours based on the fact of how thirstily they drank.

These situations are very upsetting, but I'm there to do

a professional job.

IAN:So not uncommon in puppy investigations

we see the dogs kept in poor conditions.

Fundamentally, they're a commodity that's for sale and their welfare

is not a priority.

And it was no surprise when, on arrival at this particular

location, Chief Inspector Spence and her colleagues found animals

kept in squalid conditions.

The condition of many of the dogs is worrying, and the task in front

of Elaine and her team, enormous.

There were dogs in cages.

They were in vehicles.

There was dogs roaming around.

We had to consider how we were going to manage such a large number.

I actually sent a photo of the scene to one of the dog handlers,

so they could see the gravity of the situation and the different

areas that would require being searched.

Elaine calls on colleagues to help get the dogs locked, scanned

and transported to a veterinary surgery for check ups.

Then they need to search for evidence to identify any offences

under the Animal Welfare Act.

So this is the location that we came to.

The police were already present and on the site there was numerous

accommodations and the site actually stretches much further back.

But the majority of the dogs were kept to the left hand side

of this location.

So we began a systematic account of all the dogs at that location.

We took photographs when they were in situ.

At the same time, we were contacting other colleagues to come and help us

to transport these dogs to the veterinary surgeons for them

to examine the health of those dogs.

One dog, a miniature dachshund, catches Elaine's attention.

As we were going around, there was one little dachshund

that was being kept in a cage inside a transit van.

This puppy was particularly subdued.

Just lying down.

Didn't really want to sort of engage, which was of

a grave concern.

It was really, really flat.

The dog was really flat.

We were fortunate that that dog could be dealt with very quickly

because it was showing signs of being very unwell.

So that dog was moved out to get it to a veterinary surgeon.

Along with the dachshund puppy, there were other dogs in distress.

So altogether on the site we removed 21 dogs.

A lot of dogs to deal with in one go.

There was a couple of large dogs.

There was a Saint Bernard, a couple of Labradors, but on the whole

they were very small dogs, which made it slightly easier

to transport them out of there fairly quickly.

We had been made aware by the police that there was a potential that some

of the dogs may have been stolen.

So whilst we were going around, we would check with microchip

scanners to see if there was microchip details on the dog.

Then the police would subsequently be able to look for those details

and match it up to any dogs that they believed had been stolen.

It was a long night.

With the warrant executed there and then, two arrests are made.

The site is searched and evidence seized.

We have to be very thorough in the logging of all the animals

on site, because that is evidence that's going to be produced

to a court.

As soon as the transportation arrived,

we were having these dogs loaded up, then moved off and all the paperwork

transporting with them.

The special operations team of the RSPCA then took

over as it was part of a larger investigation.

Over the next ten days, RSPCA inspector Kirsty Withnall explores

the evidence discovered, which helps her make links to other suspects

in the gang.

Mobile phones were seized, paperwork was seized which implicated suspects

that we were already aware of within the puppy dealing

operation, and whilst there was other addresses and locations

identified, it was clear that the link was this primary

address and that many of the occupants of these other

addresses also resided at the primary address.

It was then time for phase two of Operation Earth.

So the warrants at various other addresses in the local area

where sales had taken place was then planned and executed.

That brought in the remaining suspects and identified them

through mobile phones, through paperwork, rental agreements

and the local authority were hugely useful in terms of identifying

who those individuals were.

And then that material was all fed back into the investigation

and cross-referenced with what we already knew.

But there was an issue because they raided the puppy farm

site only a few days before.

Sadly, the interaction earlier that week with the police

and ourselves, this criminal gang had clearly been tipped

off that we may be aware of their activities.

So when the warrants were executed at the other remaining addresses,

it was clear that some of them had been cleared out.

The RSPCA has raided various addresses connected to an organised

criminal gang of illegal dog traders.

The special ops investigators process everything they have seized.

The scale of the enterprise is huge.

So in terms of organisation, this particular network

was all linked as family.

But as we went through the investigation and started

to analyse mobile phones, it became clear

that it was highly coordinated.

All of the members were involved in some way. The import of puppies,

the transport of puppies, the provision of paperwork, taking

to vets using different aliases,

the placing of adverts, the arranging

of sales, that takes a lot of organisation purely

because of the sums of money that can be made.

Working with APHA at the Port of Dover, they were able

to build their case tracing the activity of other members

of the gang.

So on this particular case, the RSPCA were looking at the selling

of puppies and identifying some of those that come through the border

from another country.

They identified the ones that were being sold on and therefore

they come to APHA to make sure they comply with the regulations

and if we had any evidence, and that's when we were able

to provide during the prosecution statements of what we had found

and the issues that we'd identified.

And on this particular occasion, APHA had cause to stop individuals

importing puppies under the pet passport scheme.

Some of those dogs were seized because they were in such poor

conditions. Others were allowed to carry on their journey,

and subsequently we established that those dogs

had then been sold on for a profit,

when in fact they'd been declared at the port

as being their own pet animals.

Some of the unscrupulous traders would masquerade as being pet travel

scheme travellers so they can go underneath the radar.

This particular gang was basically trying to source puppies

from any location, so it was a mixture of import, commercial

purchase, breeding, offering to buy them off people

and then bouncing the payments.

So they took the dog away and the payment never went

through, and potentially theft, as well.

So it was any opportunity to sell any puppy or dog that they could.

11 suspects are identified and enough evidence secured

to get them charged.

But now the real investigative work begins to build a watertight case

of fraud and animal welfare offences.

The gang had made well over £300,000 during their reign.

It became apparent that Covid was playing a huge part in terms

of the value that was placed on these dogs.

We've got evidence that prices almost doubled during that period.

There's thousands of pounds to be made regularly in each pet.

The RSPCA has always encouraged people to be at a property to see

the mum and the pups inside the home environment.

Organised crime groups have cottoned on to this.

IAN:At the time, Covid lockdown restrictions were slowly being eased

but were still in place, and that was being very much used

by the offenders to reduce interaction at addresses, to bring

dogs out onto the street and to meet people elsewhere from the location.

What that does is take away a lot of things that a prospective

purchaser may be looking for, and that was used quite a lot

in this particular case.

The rewards for this criminal gang were huge, but the cost to some

new owners was heartbreak and huge veterinary bills.

Sadly, in this investigation, we do see a huge impact on the victims.

They purchase a dog as an addition to their family to give

them some positivity.

Instead of being able to enjoy those early days of owning a puppy,

they're ending up with a dog that's very ill in the vets, costing them

thousands of pounds.

If you do buy a puppy from a disreputable source,

you are then setting yourself up for the future.

That animal may not live long, or if it does live long, it will need

a lot of veterinary treatments.

It really can be quite traumatic to take these statements

from individuals that are victims.

It takes two and a half years to collate all the evidence and get

a court date to bring the gang to justice.

One of the key elements was mobile phone interrogation and the reports

that that gave, and what the mobile phone showed was a clear process

of advertising dogs for sale, suggesting that dogs were home bred,

were microchipped, were vaccinated, and then also was the messaging

around arranging the sales, so inviting people to come

and see the dogs.

The manipulation of the purchasers by saying that the dog was there,

living with them, a quiet family, etc, but then also in the same

phones was the arrangement of dogs to be transported,

commercially imported,

the planning of payments and the arranging of splitting

of funds between the individuals. And the financial investigations

then show the clear volumes of money moving through the various

bank accounts concerned.

The evidence is overwhelming. Nearly a hundred dogs were sold illegally

by the gang.

This fraud is in excess of several hundred thousand pounds.

And in terms of individual dog sales, you're looking at £3,500

per dog in some cases.

Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to the fraud charges, and all 11

individuals pleaded guilty to the animal welfare charges

that were brought.

Sentencing ranges from 18 months to three years inside,

plus rehabilitation and community orders.

All are banned from keeping dogs.

From an RSPCA inspectors perspective, one of the best

outcomes is that animals are removed from these individuals and quite

often they receive fairly lengthy, if not lifetime bans

on keeping animals. And that means that those

individuals can't harm any other

animals in the future.

By having strong sentences, we can send a really powerful message

out that the UK takes animal health and animal welfare really seriously.

We take hard action to make sure those standards are maintained.

14 of the dogs found at the travellers site were rehomed.

Knowing that I've assisted those animals, they don't

have to endure being kept in those circumstances anymore

and that they've all been successfully rehomed.

I'm sure that they're living a far better life

than what they were living there.

Kirsty, the main investigator,

through tenacious and detailed work, brought

down this OCG, along with other similar operations where gangs

have cashed in to the tune of more than £3 million.

And for Elaine, there was another reward from this investigation.

Sometimes you think there is a little bit of fate that makes

something happen, because the little dachshund

that was very, very poorly.

I doubt that that little dog would have been alive had we not

arrived three days earlier. That little puppy spent the best part

of a week being cared for by veterinary surgeons.

The good news out of all of that, the puppy did make a recovery

and has since been rehomed.

Out of all the little dogs that needed help, that one did.

Two years earlier, in January 2022, the RSPCA received an anonymous

report of puppies having their ears illegally cropped

at an address in Lancashire.

So in this case, it was a member of the public that contacted

the RSPCA, which allowed us to take this action to investigate

cruelty and ear cropping.

Local inspector Will Lamping is assigned the case.

I'm a RSPCA inspector on the field investigation team.

I've been doing the job coming up to nine years now.

The majority of my role is Investigating potential offences

through going out and gathering evidence from the field.

Be that visits to vets or executing warrants, interviewing suspects

and then building case files.

For the RSPCA,

ear cropping is a serious concern.

Between 2015 and 2022,

the RSPCA saw a 2,493% increase in reports of ear

cropping to the cruelty hotline.

And just to put it into context, in 2022, we had on average, one

report of ear cropping coming in every day.

It's a cruel practice and has become a fashionable trend,

despite being banned in the UK since 2006.

It's really upsetting seeing images of puppies

that have had their ears cropped.

It is really cruel, it causes a lot of suffering and for some

of these puppies, the way in which it's carried out

is barbaric, done in a really crude way with kitchen scissors,

for example, without anaesthesia.

This is a completely unnecessary procedure.

Unfortunately, ear cropping is still very relevant

in some communities.

We particularly see it in those that breed bull breeds and want to sell

those puppies as hard dogs.

They are looking for that intimidating look.

So ear cropping is a procedure whereby either the ear flap

is changed in shape,

so for example, the ear shape may be cut and altered and pinned

so that it actually then grows upright,

or in some cases ear cropping can actually end up with the entire

earflap being removed, such that the top of the ear is flush

with the dog's skull.

I personally don't understand how anyone who has a small puppy

in their hands can take a pair of scissors to that dog

for purely cosmetic reasons.

And social media is sadly fuelling the demand for such

amateur surgical mutilation.

So we're seeing these dogs being glamorised, being celebrated,

and we are unfortunately also seeing some celebrities and some

influencers that have cropped dogs, and they do feature them

on their platforms.

So people see these dogs with cropped ears,

they think it's a normal, it's a natural look

when that isn't the case.

Following the tip off, disturbing evidence drops into Will's inbox.

We also received pictures showing the ear cropping of the puppies,

which was really unpleasant to see.

As you could see the puppy with its ears still bleeding, lying

in a cage, looking totally out of it and just in real pain.

The team need to act fast, so reach out to Lancashire Police

to help secure warrants.

When a call like that initially comes in, first thing

you're thinking about is the clock and whether the puppy

is still going to be there, because at that stage, we don't know

if puppies are being brought to this location for ear cropping

and then going away again.

So you do ideally want to get there as quick as possible,

because if there is a puppy there that's still injured, as soon

after the event as it happens is when you're most likely

to find it.

In cases of ear cropping, the RSPCA special ops team pursue

with the full force of the law.

In recent years, they've achieved convictions against ear croppers

where puppies have changed hands for between £3,000-5,000.

We know that there are individuals that will pay quite a lot of money

for dogs with cropped ears, and unfortunately, where

you have that desire to sort of supply a particular type of dog,

it often goes hand in hand with irresponsible

or illegal behaviour.

And sadly, dogs always end up being exploited

as a result of that.

The offences that we can identify that have been committed

in this country, we will prosecute because the amount of pain

that it causes to the puppies is huge and causes them

from a very early age to be distrustful of people.

It can have real long term impacts, so there can be wound

infections, for example.

It can really impact upon the way in which they behave.

So how they signal to people about how they're feeling and also

how they signal to other animals.

A month after the anonymous tip off, in the early hours, the police

and RSPCA raid the address.

Police, police, stay there.

When we executed the warrant, we didn't find any puppies

at the address and the animals that we did find all seem to be OK

and had their ears intact.

We did, however, recover two phones from the suspect that then went

off for interrogation.

So it is concerning when we have pictures of animal abuse,

when we don't find that puppy, because the question

is, "Where is that puppy now? Has it gone elsewhere?

"Is there other puppies that are also getting their ears cropped?"

Empty handed, attention now turns to the phones.

The two mobile phones we thought would be our best bet at finding

evidence of any potential offences.

We already had one picture showing potentially a cropping, so we knew

it was likely that they were recording it or taking pictures

and possibly sending that to others.

What they discover astonishes everyone.

So when I got the phone report back, I did see evidence

that we were expecting to do with the cropping of ears

and the mutilation of those puppies.

What I wasn't expecting was what we found next.

It's November 2022,

eight months since an RSPCA and Lancashire Police raid

where animal cruelty is suspected

comes up with nothing.

It's frustrating because you build up this intelligence picture

and then you think we've got a real opportunity to kind of stop

this behaviour taking place.

But of course, the intelligence picture isn't always

going to be perfect, so you do have to take a step back and consider

if this suspect is actually involved.

In the months since the failed raid, Will and his team have been busy

trawling the suspect's two mobile phones.

There was thousands of images and videos to trawl through.

It took hundreds of man hours.

I was sat in the office going through these videos

and pictures one by one, trying to piece them up together.

It is difficult sometimes to view the kind of content that we found.

What they unearth shows the spread of this criminal cruelty.

We found pictures of ear cropping, but also pictures and videos

of large array of wildlife crime.

Everything from foxes to badgers to deer.

I realised that this was a much bigger investigation

than I had originally anticipated.

There was all sorts of contacts and people involved in the planning

and taking part in the kind of wildlife persecution

that we were seeing.

So that all gets documented and passed to our intel team as well,

to help them build pictures about what's going on.

So it's really important that we do have inspectors like Will Lamping

that are investigating what are really horrendous crimes

for these individual animals, tackling the cruelty

that is associated with this illegal and unscrupulous behaviour.

What we have seen is, unfortunately, a lot of fuelling

of this on social media.

We were able to focus in on two specific videos.

The first of those videos showed a fox in a location that we believe

was a garage, being set upon by two dogs.

What was really distressing about that one is that it happened

in someone's private garage.

Which means that they will have gone out, caught the fox, taken the fox

back to this garage, and then let it go for the dogs to attack it there.

I don't know how long that fox was in that cage for, but it's hard

to imagine how that fox felt being trapped in that cage,

waiting for people to come with the dogs to attack him.

That video, it shows the sick enjoyment that these people

were getting from it.

Watching this kind of material does have an impact.

It's really unpleasant to go through those videos and pictures

of animals being abused, especially on the scale that we found.

It's something that you never get used to, but ultimately, I put

myself into a mindset that's about looking for evidence,

looking for connections, trying to find the facts that will lead

to potential offences.

So dates, locations, the same dogs being used.

If you focus on the animals themselves,

it is just heart breaking to watch.

The cruelty to the fox is very clear, but the RSPCA is also

concerned for the wellbeing of the dogs.

DOGS WHINE

The dogs are whining.

They themselves are also being attacked back by the fox that's

effectively fighting for its life and ultimately are likely to end

up with injuries themselves.

Armed with the videos and other digital data, the special ops team

has enough evidence to get a second warrant.

This time we found a lot more evidence.

There was two lurcher type dogs, the first of which had a lot of cuts

to its muzzle and legs, which is quite distinctive

of an animal that has been used in wildlife persecution,

particularly when they are going after animals such as foxes.

The fox will often bite on the front legs and the muzzle.

We also found a second lurcher that was totally lame on one

of its legs. It later turned out that that animal had a fracture

that was not being treated.

Along with those two dogs, we also found three bull breed type dogs

that had had their ears cropped.

One of these still had the stitches in.

The suspect is arrested on sight

during the raid, but denies

any responsibility and refuses to allow the bull breeds to be signed

into the RSPCA's care.

These dogs are quite valuable.

They quite often want to advertise these as potential breeding dogs,

or generate more puppies from the dogs for them

to crop and sell.

All five dogs are sent for treatment to safeguard their health

and well-being.

It takes 16 months for the case to make it to court in February 2024.

Once I've completed my investigation, I then submit a case

file to the RSPCA prosecution department.

It was felt that both of the videos showing the foxes being attacked

by the dogs were evidence of offences that we could prove

that the suspect had committed.

It paints a narrative that is hard for him to avoid,

in that we have a picture of him holding a deceased fox in the same

location as the video is taking place.

Not only that, we have him named during the video.

The evidence is so compelling, the suspect pleads guilty.

Along with pleading guilty,

they also signed over the three

remaining bull breeds, which was fantastic as it meant their welfare

was secured as well.

The suspect is sentenced to two and a half years in prison

and received a lifetime ban from keeping all animals.

Personally, this is the longest sentence that I've had involved

in one of my cases for wildlife persecution.

The bans that were handed

down are a great result,

because that lifetime ban stops the suspect himself

from being in control of any more animals.

It's really important in these types of cases that we have individuals

being given custodial sentences.

Then this is likely to deter this sort of crime.

Ultimately, I think it sends a message that if you choose to use

dogs for these kind of activities, that you face never being able

to own another animal again, which is as it should be.

It's the knowledge of knowing that you will be caught

and you will be given a tough sentence that has that really

important deterrent value.

This case will definitely be one that stays with me.

The sheer amount of suffering that was contained within that mobile

phone can't be understated.

At the end of the day, owning an animal is a huge privilege,

and if you can't be trusted with that, then ultimately

you just shouldn't have responsibility for an animal at all.

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