Closed petition Keep the puppy import age at 15 weeks

Closed on 24 February 2022

There is a new proposed law that would increase the minimum age for importing puppies to the UK to 6 months old.

We would like to keep the current law in place allowing them to be imported at 15 weeks.

I run a charity called The Pack Project that rehomes dogs mainly from Romania.

A dog’s key development window is 0-16 weeks.

The new proposal for puppies not to be allowed to be imported until 6 months old will cause unnecessary suffering and detrimental development to puppies in rescue centres outside of the UK.

We have seen first hand how challenging puppies find adapting to life when they arrive aged 6-11 months and how much easier puppies aged 4-5 months find the same situation.

We support efforts to reduce ‘puppy smuggling’ but this should not be one of them.