The famous slogan of today’s title was created in 1978 by Clarissa Baldwin, then-Chief Executive of Dogs Trust, the largest dog welfare charity in the United Kingdom, but these words remain just as relevant today.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of children plead for the latest fad or top toy on the market, only to discard them a few weeks after Christmas when the novelty wears off. 

Unfortunately, the same tends to happen with dogs, but the consequences of treating dogs as gifts or toys can be horrific and include neglect, abuse, abandonment, relinquishment to shelters and euthanasia (putting to death).

Please adopt a dog, don't buy an online, usually puppy-farmed, discardable item ...

Nobody's Dog

Nobody hears her soft mournful cries

Nobody sees her vexed inert eyes

She’s hidden away in iniquitous shame

Shrouded in darkness, imprisoned in pain

Nobody soothes her gnawed bleeding paws

Nobody cleans her raw weeping sores.

She spins round in circles, she paces her cell

She’s scared, weak and hungry. Her puppy farmed hell.

Nobody smells her soiled rancid bed

Nobody strokes her sweet malformed head

Her skin is infested, her tender bones ache

Her puppies have gone and her heart’s set to break

Nobody knows she has much love to share

Nobody feels her relentless despair

She mentally broken; she’s physically spent

She’s hoping her passport to heaven’s been sent.

And nobody heard her last grasping breath.

Nobody witnessed her harrowing death

Nobody offered her comfort or love

When she journeyed to live with the angels above

Yet…

If nobody wanted those Spaniels she’d made

If nobody sanctioned her grim reapers trade.

If nobody found his ploys hard to resist

Her vile puppy farmer would cease to exist.

By Cheryl Lowe