When you see a puppy in the window of the pet store or an ad online for puppies for sale, you can know with near certainty that the pup is from a puppy mill.
A puppy mill is a large-scale breeding operation, where "breeding stock" - rather dogs that are bred over and over again - are kept in cages their entire lives with little to no veterinary care, and then are killed, abandoned or sold when they are no longer fertile.
Puppy mills not only produce horrific endings for animals that are bred, but they tear puppies away from their mothers long before they should be. Purebred puppies are then sold in bulk to "brokers" and then those individuals sell the puppies (often with falsified purebred paperwork) to pet stores ... or sell them to laboratories for "research" - which I'm sure you can interpret intelligently.
In short, puppy mills are commercialized breeding and they are hiding in plain site in areas near all of us.
There are more than 6,000 commercialized breeders licensed by the USDA - our own government licenses these breeders, but they do not protect the animals or potential owners.
The USDA requires food, shelter and water ... but that doesn't translate to humane conditions. In fact, the USDA allows puppy mills - or commercial breeders - to own more than one thousand dogs, to keep all dogs in cages for years at a time, and to breed dogs as often as possible.
Even worse, there are thousands of puppy mills that are not licensed and have even more grotesque and unmentionable conditions.
Only four states (Virginia, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington) have even limited the number of dogs that can be in commercial breeding facilities, according to the Humane Society of the United States.
Animals are not a mere commodity.
Perhaps that's a concept our government doesn't yet understand - or at least enforce, but I cannot imagine people would be so desperate for a puppy that they would knowingly purchase a puppy whose mom is sitting in a cage of her own feces with no veterinary care and who is impregnated and bred until she is useless to the breeder and then tossed aside like garbage.
Sometimes seeing the truth is the best way to truly understand it. You can search puppy mills and see thousands of pictures and videos, following is a video of a puppy mill rescue by the Humane Society of the U.S. that shows the animals being saved, but also shows the conditions of puppy mills: http://video.humanesociety.org/video/999193548001.
There is an entire glossary of lingo when it comes to puppy mills, which adeptly displays this industry - below are a few terms to give you a glimpse into commercialized breeders.
- Buncher: A person who takes puppy mill rejects—dogs not up to breed standards—and/or dogs advertised as "free to a good home" and sells them to Class B dealers, who will in turn sell them to industrial research laboratories.
- Culling: The killing of puppy mill puppies who, for various reasons, are considered unacceptable (twisted leg, coat or eye color not up to breed standard, misshaped ears, etc.).
- Debarking: A controversial procedure in which a dog's vocal cords are severed so that he is unable to bark. In puppy mills, this procedure is often performed by smashing a puppy's vocal cords with a pipe.
- Source: ASPCA Puppy Mill Glossary: http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/puppy-mills/puppy-mill-glossary.aspx
If you want to help stop puppy mills know that puppies sold online and in pet stores are almost always puppy mill dogs; increase awareness with the people you know - sign the ASPCA pledge against puppy mills, send a note to your legislators, don't shop at pet stores that sell puppies and support those that feature adoptable animals.
As long as we allow puppy mills to exist by continuing to buy puppies from pet stores and breeders, millions of animals will continue to die in shelters simply because there are not enough homes for them.
Know about puppy mills and tell people about it ... you will make a difference, and you can be the change.
Learn More:
http://www.aspca.org/puppymills
http://www.nopetstorepuppies.com/
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/puppy_mills/
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/puppy_mills/qa/puppy_mill_FAQs.html
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