It would be easier if my two dogs were dead,” Sophia* tells me. In April, after 10 years together, she and her partner split up, and Sophia lost custody of their two French bulldogs. “There is this weird grief knowing they are only 30 minutes away but I can’t see them.”
Sophia works in the accounts department of a London law firm, and left the dogs with her ex when she moved out of their home. They agreed to share the pets, but she says her partner “tried to seize sole ownership” almost immediately. “He blocked access – giving excuses all the time,” she says. “He would tell me, ‘the dogs have plans’. When he did let me see them, he’d claim the dogs had come back with injuries – and he had to take them to the vet.” Eventually, her ex cut all contact between her and the dogs. “He said [shared custody] wasn’t in the dogs’ best interests and he didn’t want to do it anymore … [but] they are my babies.”
