Strawberry: her short life is her message
Home > Latest News | 09 Oct 2020
Warning: graphic photos and descriptions of animal cruelty.
She was still a puppy when she was left to endure a horrific 4 days of pain and suffering so intense that it killed her.
The whistleblowers called her Strawberry.
A beautiful boxer puppy not even one-year-old when she was forced to endure a pregnancy and birthing process that her young body simply couldn’t cope with.
Strawberry managed to deliver 3 pups before complications set in. Strawberry struggled for days trying to birth the rest of her pups.
As she grew weaker by the hour, she started oozing green and brown fluid and she was described by the whistleblowers as smelling ‘dead’.
As she lay there deteriorating and becoming dangerously ill, the flies started to swarm over her body laying their eggs. Within 24 hours Strawberry, still clinging to life, was crawling with maggots. They were in her mouth and her vagina.
Her pups had died inside her and started to rot… and she gave birth to small pieces of her dead puppies. Strawberry was seriously ill but her owner did not take her to the vet.
On the last day of her short life, she was administered antibiotics by her owner, but it was all too late. Strawberry died in pain huddled around her surviving 2 puppies on the floor of her cage probably not far from where she was born less than a year earlier. The final brutality shown to her came via the puppy farmer's boot, looking down on her exhausted body he stated "Are you dead yet” as he shoved her with his boot, she was only minutes from death.
Strawberry’s body was tossed away in the surrounding bushland as was common practice on this property. We know this because 5 years ago, Oscar’s Law investigators had photographed another dead dog discarded in the scrub at the back of the property.
8 weeks after Strawberry died, her two surviving puppies appeared on the Facebook page of Claremont Puppies and Pets, a West Australian pet shop. Their pictures were accompanied by a simple post: coming soon - 2 female boxer puppies. Belying their tragic start to life and the fate of their mother and litter-mates whose bodies were discarded at the back of the puppy factory.
Strawberry’s abuse occurred on a puppy factory that the New South Wales Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall claims was ‘monitored’ by authorities and is regulated by ‘robust’ animal welfare legislation.
This so-called robust legislation and alleged monitoring did nothing to save Strawberry from the horrific abuse she suffered in her short life - proving how ineffective the New South Wales legislation is.
Take action for Strawberry:
There are thousands of dogs like Strawberry on New South Wales government-sanctioned puppy factories.
Thanks to the incredibly brave whistleblowers we have been given a glimpse into what life is like for these dogs. It has provided us an opportunity to take action on behalf of Strawberry and dogs like her that are still alive but enduring a life of deprivation on puppy factories.
We cannot let Strawberry’s life be in vain. Her short life is evidence that weak legislation must be changed and puppy factories and the sale of puppies in pet shops must be banned.
Demand justice for Strawberry: email NSW MPs
end puppy factories