I hope the people involved will be OK. Bringing stray dogs from the other side of the world is probably the dumbest idea for a charity that I’ve heard of (don’t we have enough unwanted dogs in need of good homes here already?), but it’s a free country, and if they want to spend their time and money on this, so be it.

This is rather worrying though:

Acting Chief Veterinary Officer Alick Simmons said: “While initial tests show that this puppy has tested positive for rabies, this shows that the system is working and the case has been picked up while the animal is in quarantine.

“We are now tracing animals that have moved from the kennels to ensure that all animals that have come into contact with the puppy are monitored.”

Is this how quarantine is supposed to work? I would have thought that all animals would be kept apart until they passed the tests. Obviously this could get very expensive if any of the diseases we quarantine against are airborne. Failing this, why not process them in batches i.e. no animal passes until they all do? If some fail, they are isolated and dealt with appropriately, the rest would then restart the quarantine process from the beginning.