(22/04/10)

Highly disturbing GA expose of a UK based greyhound breeder
(pictures and video to come soon)

After receiving a tip off from local residents about bad conditions at ZigZag Kennels at Dunholme in Lincolnshire, Greyhound Action sent an investigator to look into the situation.

ZigZag is owned by Charles Pickering, who breeds greyhounds for the dog racing industry. Pickering was exposed in the Sunday Times for supplying young greyhounds, which had turned out to be unsuitable for racing, to Liverpool University, for use in dissection (see www.greyhoundaction.org.uk/timesLiverpoolExpose.htm).

The investigator has made several recent visits to the kennels, where Pickering keeps about 70 adult greyhounds and pups. Here is his disturbing report:-

The dogs in the paddocks are fed on left over pasta and rice. I was told that Pickering picks this up from a local restaurant, which is probably the case, as you can see the spices and herbs in it. They are also given roughly chopped or minced bones.

The food just is slung over the fence and forms a pile on the ground, which encourages rats and mice. You can see in one photo how the ‘fresh’ pasta is just dumped on the old pasta and, if not eaten, the pasta goes moldy and the bones go rancid. Pickering had a problem earlier this year with rats and arranged for some men to come in with terriers to kill them.

There is no means of water supply to the paddocks and the water in the troughs is rain water. In the brood pens there are only buckets of water, which frequently get tipped over, leaving the dogs with no access to fresh water. One pen stank of urine and was heavily soiled with diarrhea.

On one of my visits to the kennels, on Sunday 21st of February, it had been snowing lightly since before daybreak and when I got there at about 2pm there were no footprints or tyre marks in the snow as the video shows. I left after dusk and no one had been in the paddocks to feed to the dogs.

The Sunday before, the 14th, there were no signs of fresh food, only manky old bones and it was the same on Sunday 21st.

Because the pens can’t be easily accessed and the dogs are fed from outside of the pens, they get little or no human contact.

On February 28th, the puppies that were roaming free on the 14th and 21st were penned up with a black male who had a nasty open wound on his thigh – see photo.

On the 21st I saw a white and black puppy get caught through the fence and attacked by the older greyhounds. You can hear it but can’t see it on the last part of the ‘middle pens 21.02.10’ video. I was told by a local resident that this sort of thing was happening on a regular basis.

One of the adult dogs, a big white and blue male, called Larkhill River, had a very bad cough, which could be kennel cough or due to a heart condition or kennel cough.

The first time I visited ZigZag in one of the kennels in the barn there was a very badly scarred dog, who was so frightened that I couldn’t get him to come to front of the kennel. On Feb 28th, the
same kennel contained a different dog and had blood splattered on the wall.

According to the council planning department, Pickering hasn’t had planning permission to breed since July 2007, but he somehow still manages to be licensed by the council to operate as a breeder. A condition of his previous planning permission was that he could not keep dogs over the age of 8 months out in the paddocks, which he is clearly doing.

According to the Greyhound Stud Book, litter entries received for Charles Pickering from June 2005 – May 2006 total 39 and out of 198 pups born, just 90 reached the naming stage and only 46 (23%) are recorded racing. Where are the other dogs?

GA UK