PET THEFTS.

There has been a rise in lost pet wanted posters in the area these past few weeks, i hope this is just coincidence and not the work of organised pet thieves operating round here again.
I know the idea of organised gangs of people going around in vans stealing peoples cats and dogs sounds daft but it is far more common than is generally assumed and happens regularly all over the country. There used to be gossip that animals were stolen for laboratory experiments (and maybe there was/is the occasional case of a zealous student taking a neighbours cat to use as homework, but this isn't very usual), but, that isn't the reason for the thefts, sadly, the real reasons are just as cruel.
Trained pet dogs are stolen to use in the training of fighting dogs because if they were bought legitimately it could be easy to trace the buyers (as they disappeared or were impounded by police in a raid at a dog fighting tournament), cats are also stolen to be used as practice to keep the dog's aggression levels up, if a pet dog bites or cat scratches the fighting dog, it will become aggressive and angered which is 'good' for its aggressive fighting attitude.
The money that is made from dog fighting every year in this country is in the £millions and as the ownership of 'fighting' dogs has risen so has the number of known and regular fights gone up and can now even be watched over the internet.
Pet thieves did once operate in this area, a local Notting hill based animal welfare group (W.L.A.C) were, with others, monitoring the situation as much as possible at the time and the thieves were almost caught in north west London, sadly the partial number plate recorded wasn't enough to trace their vehicle.
I'm not saying that organised pet thefts are happening round here again (i hope not) but pet owners should be careful about leaving their dogs outside shops or outside alone for any length of time, even 2 minutes, it takes only seconds to have them away.
Micro chipping may help but they are known to cause cancer in at least 5% of all pets, so that might not be a risk worth taking, i know i wouldn't try that way.