Lucy's Law comes into force

Anyone who's worked in practice will be well aware of the misery surrounding cases of preventable suffering, such as flea-bite anaemia kittens, flystrike rabbits, and poorly bred parvo pups. It was seeing eight cases of the latter in one night, just over 10 years ago, that inspired me to campaign against puppy farming. Already a media vet, it was easy to connect with dog-loving personalities, inviting them to be celebrity judges at my fun annual dog show ‘Pup Aid’. Over the years Pup Aid grew and grew, helping raise awareness about puppy farming, as well as the only two ways of choosing a dog responsibly, either direct from the breeder always asking “Where's Mum?”, or adopted from rescue instead.

As a kid I confess to being a caterpillar-collecting, nerdy geek who struggled to have any human friends let alone interact with proper grown-ups, so unsurprisingly politics, history, and law appeared as alien as they could. But I now needed to do more than just a dog show to raise awareness, so I began lobbying MPs in Westminster, started e-petitions, attended rallies and debates, and over 300 visits to Parliament, on every day off from vetting, began making slow progress. My trusted team of grassroots campaigners faced much opposition, often from some very unlikely organisations, but we battled on and kept presenting evidence to the country's decision-makers. Puppy farming mainly depends on third party dealers like pet shops, ensuring the state of the mums and breeding conditions remain hidden from public view.