Dog days are over

We Brits love dogs. So why have people bought puppies in lockdown that they are already starting to abandon?

- Alice Cooke

The COVID-19 pandemic meant we have all spent a lot more time at home, which resulted in a nationwide surge in puppy sales. But why? Lockdown will end (has sort of ended), and then you won’t have time for a puppy, just as you didn’t before… so either you’ll have a really unhappy little dog or you’ll abandon it. Brilliant.

Google searches for “buy a puppy” ballooned by 120 per cent in the month after the UK lockdown was announced. While adopting a dog is a wonderful thing to do, getting one on a whim that you can’t possibly look after in the long-term simply isn’t. It’s cruel and selfish.

But it gets worse. As ‘dog lovers’ rushed to buy new puppies during lockdown, many did very little research – and even more didn’t even meet the animal beforehand. Seemingly no one had heard of puppy farms.