The Truth about Puppy Mills

By Sherry Bates

Effective Speaking

• Began after World War II

• Time of the Great Depression

• When farmers looked for other ways to make money

• US Department of Agriculture and the US Government encouraged the raising of puppies as “crops”.

History

• This would help poor farmers supplement their income.

• Lacked knowledge of canine health

• Little money to spend on food and veterinary care.

• Dogs were housed in chicken coops or rabbit hutches

• Dogs were provided little socialization

• No Veterinary care

• Major department stores sold puppies and birds in 1950’s

• “Mom and Pop” pet stores began selling puppies

• Followed by the larger stores that became mega franchises

Realized the boom is selling dogs

• Most of the puppies were bred in the Midwest

• Brokers looking for a way to supply pets to the Eastern Seaboard

• Lancaster Pennsylvania

Home to 4000 farms

• Home to 22,000 Amish people.

People who live according to God’s word and religion

• They shun modern day conveniences like cars and electricity.

• They still rely on the old fashion mule power to plow their fields

• Besides raising cows and chickens

• Large scale dog breeding

• Known as “puppy mills”

• Dogs are crammed in wire bottom pens behind barns or trailers

Department of Agriculture

These farmers sell 20,000 puppies a year

For an average of $223 a pup.

• The quaint farmers are becoming rich while the poor dog suffers.

Conditions the Dog live in:• Female dogs are bred the first time they

come into heat and every heat cycle after.

• They usually give birth to an estimated 140 pups during their life.

• They are bred until their poor worn out bodies can’t produce any longer.

• Then they are killed by being bashed in the head with a rock or they are shot

• Sometimes they are sold to laboratories or are dumped.

The dogs are kept in small wire cages for their entire lives.

They are almost never allowed out. They never touch solid ground or grass

to run and play. They sit in their feces all day, everyday

• Dogs are covered with matted, filthy hair, their teeth are rotting and their eyes have ulcers.

• The dogs Jaws have rotted because of tooth decay

Many dogs lose feet and legs when they are caught in the wire floors of the cages and cut off as the dog struggles to free themselves.

Many of the dogs are injured in fights that occur in the cramped cages from which there is no escape.

Very often there is no heat or air conditioning in a puppy mill.

The dogs freeze in the winter and die of heat stroke in the summer.

Puppies "cook" on the wires of the cages in the summer.

Dogs in puppy mills are debarked often by ramming a steel rod down their throats to rupture their vocal cords.

• By not spending adequate money on proper food, housing or veterinary care.

• food that is fed in puppy mills is often purchased from dog food companies by the truck load

• It is so devoid of nutritional value that the dogs' teeth rot at early ages.

• Puppies are often taken from their mother when they are 5 to 8 weeks old and sold to brokers who pack them in crates for resale to pet stores all over the country

• The puppies are shipped by truck or plane and often without adequate food, water, ventilation or shelter.

Innocent families buy the puppies only to find that the puppy is very ill or has genetic or emotional problems.

Often the puppies die of disease. Many others have medical problems that cost thousands of dollars.

And many have emotional problems because they have not been properly socialized in the mills.

The older females and males are shipped off to the auction block. Where they are sold for research or to another Mill.

• dogs are bred for quantity, not quality

• unmonitored genetic defects and personality disorders that are passed on from generation to generation are common

• Results in high veterinary bills for people

• Maladjusted dogs will be disposed of by their owners

• Animal welfare organizations got involved, investigating conditions at these farms and eventually were successful in bringing national attention to the dreadful and irresponsible conditions at these "puppy mills."

• This led to the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).

• The AWA is administered by the US Department of Agriculture

• 6,000 licensed commercial kennels’

• 70 inspectors to cover 8,300 facilities

• Puppy mills are USDA licensed so they can sell puppies to pet stores.

USDA is the only one who can shut down a puppy mill!

• The seven states with the most puppy mills

• Arkansas

• Iowa

• Kansas

• Missouri

• Nebraska

• Oklahoma

• Pennsylvania

• 3,500 pet stores in the United States sell puppies

• They sell approximately 500,000 thousand puppies a year.

• the puppy industry in Missouri is valued at 40 million dollars a year

• The puppy industry in one county in Pennsylvania - Lancaster - is valued at 4 million dollars a year.

Do Not Buy Your Puppy From a Pet Store

Make Adoption Your First Option

How to Stop a puppy mill!

• Know How to Recognize a Responsible Breeder

• Remember that responsible breeders have their dogs’ interests in mind.

• They are not simply interested in making a sale, but in placing their pups in good homes.

• See Where Your Puppy Was Born and Bred

• One sign that you are speaking to an unscrupulous breeder is that they will not let you see the facility in which your puppy was born

• Always ask to see the breeding premises and to meet both parents (or at least the mother) of the puppy you want to take home

• Ask for the names of five people who have bought puppies from them and then call the references.

• Ask if the puppies are sold on a contract and then ask to see the contract. Ask if there is a warranty.

• Ask whether the breeder will take back a dog regardless of the age if you are unable to take care of it.

• to see the pedigree and ask how many champions there are in the lineage

• Listen to whether the breeder asks you any questions.

• If the breeder doesn't care about the home that the puppy would be going to, then you don't want to buy from them.

• DO NOT, under any circumstances, buy a dog in a pet store. Research by the human society establishes that 98% of the dogs in pet stores come from what we consider to be puppy mills.

• You are not saving that puppy, you are sentencing it's parents to lives of misery.

• Internet Buyers, Beware

• Buying a puppy from the Internet is as risky as buying from a pet store

• When you buy a puppy based on a picture and a phone call, you have no way of seeing the puppy’s breeding premises or meeting his parents.

• Inform your state and federal legislators that you are disturbed by the inhumane treatment of dogs in puppy mills, and would like to see legislation passed that ensures that all animals bred to be pets are raised in healthy conditions

Speak Out!

Dedicated to Sonny Ray

A PUPPY MILL

SURVIVOR