CONVICTED (2023) | backyard breeders Dominic Lewis Fouracre, born June 1988, of Ballymote, St Nicholas Road, Barry CF62 6QY, and Rachel Lewis, born c. 1979, of Y Rhodfa, Barry CF63 – kept English bulldog adults and puppies in “appalling” and “disgusting” conditions, with five of them having to be put down.
Prolific breeder Dominic Fouracre, a director of newly formed company DS Cladding Solutions Ltd, and former partner Rachel Lewis attempted to sell the puppies before police officers entered Fouracre’s then-home in Clive Road, Barry, to find it covered with dog faeces and urine.
Fouracre owned three adult bulldogs found in the Clive Road house and care worker Lewis had been caring for nine bulldog puppies who were also in the filthy property.
Prosecutor Martha Smith-Higgins said the neglect was uncovered on June 10, 2022, after a complaint was made through Hope Rescue. The charity alerted Vale of Glamorgan Council, whose officers gained entry to the home with police officers.
“There were eight bulldogs behind a baby-gate which was covered in dog hair and faeces, with food pushed underneath that they could not access,” said the prosecutor.
“There was faeces pushed into the floor and one dog was seen to eat faeces from the floor. The dog bedding was littered with faeces and urine. There was no water or food in the bowls. Blood could be seen in the shredded paper in a crate.
“Four puppies were confined to a small box and many dogs were suffering from cherry eye, which is where the eye pops out and becomes exposed.
“All 12 dogs were seized.”
A vet found health issues including severely low weight, spinal problems, corkscrew tails, an inability to walk properly, breathing difficulties, conjunctivitis, alopecia, yeast infection and ear infection.
Three puppies and one adult dog had to be put down. Others will have long-term medical problems. The vet said the dogs had not been fed properly or given enough water.
One dog was put down because of a severe rectal prolapse which Fouracre had tried to treat by bathing the puppy.
Fouracre said he had only seen a smaller prolapse at that stage and did not think it needed a vet’s treatment.
Lewis had owned the mother of the puppies but she claimed Fouracre had offered to vaccinate the litter and sell them at eight weeks of age.
But the court heard Fouracre — who by this point was her ex-partner — was “not happy” with the litter and ignored messages from Lewis. She accepted she should have sought help from a vet but said she became “overwhelmed” by caring for the dogs and her three children as well as working.
Two days before the puppies were found in Fouracre’s home, Lewis had brought them there. Fouracre returned from a holiday abroad and was surprised to find the puppies inside. He then neglected the puppies but the court also heard their health issues had started before Lewis left them at his home.
Fouracre had been advertising bulldog puppies for sale online since 2017 and Lewis had tried to use Facebook to sell puppies the month before the offences came to light. Ms Smith-Higgins described the pair as seeking “commercial gain”.
Fouracre admitted nine animal welfare offences while Lewis pleaded guilty to four offences.
Their crimes included causing unnecessary suffering and not meeting animals’ needs. The court heard the adult bulldogs had not been in Lewis’ care and her offences only involved the puppies. Neither defendant had previous convictions.
Ruth Smith, representing Fouracre, said her client had not expected to see the puppies at his home when he returned from holiday and he had then tried to wash one puppy’s prolapse. She added that the prolapse had not been as severe at this point and that Fouracre was shocked when the authorities showed him a picture of it at a later stage.
The court heard Fouracre was in financial difficulty after losing his job during the pandemic and is now living with his parents. Ms Smith added he no longer wants to own animals and has recently got a job at an agency.
Will Bebb, for Lewis, pointed out her children would have to be taken in by social services if she was jailed. He said she had cared for a family dog for 12 years with no issues but found herself “struggling to cope” with the puppies due to “the quantity of the dogs” and her “active work schedule”, which led to “well-intentioned but incompetent care”, he told the court.
The judge, Recorder Ben Blakemore, said the pair had been hoping to make a profit after keeping the dogs in “appalling” and “disgusting” conditions. He added that there had been no ventilation in the Clive Road property and no toys for the dogs, who “resorted to chewing anything the could”.
The conditions “beggared belief”, he told the defendants.
Fouracre was banned from keeping animals for eight years but Lewis escaped a ban after the judge noted her “adequate” care of two family dogs.
Sentencing |
Fouracre: 22-week jail term suspended for 12 months; 180 hours of unpaid work and 10 days of rehabilitation activity Eight-year ban applicable to all animals (expires November 2031).
Lewis: 14-week jail term suspended for 12 months; 120 hours of unpaid work and eight days of rehabilitation activity. No ban.
Each must pay £4,000 towards prosecution costs — £1,000 lower than the amount requested by the prosecutor.
Following the sentencing of Dominic Fouracre and Rachel Lewis, Hope Rescue took to Facebook to express their disappointment over the court’s leniency. Of the 12 dogs rescued from the vile pair, the charity said there were only seven survivors, all of whom had “suffered so much”. Two were euthanised immediately due to their appalling suffering. This included a male puppy with a necrotic rectal prolapse. The surviving 10 dogs then had to battle parvovirus but pulled through thanks to the efforts of Hope Rescue and their veterinary team. Sadly, further investigations and x-rays revealed serious joint and spinal issues with three more dogs – one of whom had been adopted – having to be put to sleep.
In total, the charity spent £25,000 in veterinary costs to give the rescued dogs a fighting chance of survival.
The charity noted that the couple had boasted to buyers about their links to another dodgy breeding operation, Posherbulls. The owners of Posherbulls, Karl and Victoria Shellard, faced prosecution in their own right in 2022 for illegal breeding and animal welfare offences and were exposed in a BBC documentary on unethical and extreme dog breeding.