RVC Pandemic Puppy Team need 12 minutes of your time

The Royal Veterinary College's Pandemic Puppy team need twelve minutes of your time to complete their survey. The survey is anonymous and will help researchers at the RVC understand how information in adverts affects puppy buying.

One of the key findings of our research so far has been that the number of puppies reported to have been sold with a passport has increased from 4.1% in 2019 to 10.4% in 2022. This suggests substantially more puppies are being imported into the UK for sale. Worryingly, the ages of these puppies sold with a passport suggests that the majority of them were imported illegally. Increased public awareness of the risks from buying an imported puppy is vital to avoid this becoming a normalised behaviour. However, little research has been conducted to explore public attitudes towards, and understanding of, the imported puppy trade. Given the recent demise of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals Bill) which aimed to clamp down on the illegal puppy trade, research in this area is more vital than ever.

To fill this knowledge gap, the RVC have designed an anonymous, short (taking approx 12 minutes) survey which aims to investigate how much the general public, prospective and current dog owners, and veterinary professionals understand about the legalities, scale and risks from of importing puppies to the UK for sale. They hope the results will help to inform charitable and government policies by identifying where educational campaigns could best be directed, and what they should contain.

This research has received ethical approval from the Social Science Research Ethical Review Board at the Royal Veterinary College, ethical approval no: URN SR2023-0085.

The survey link is: www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/purchasingpuppies