WHAT IS A PUPPY MILL?
Good question. Puppy mills are large-scale commercial breeding facilties with many different breeds of dogs. They primarily sell to retail pet shops, but also to individual buyers. The dogs are bred entirely for profit, with no concern of the dogs’ health or well-being. The dogs are force-bred continuously, more than they should be, and the facility is often full of filth and disease. Overall, the living conditions are unfit for the animals. Many dogs become sickly and die because of the horrible conditions, but the owners do not care because they are only in the business for the money. The area in which the dogs are bred, born, and live are usually off-limits to the public. Despite all this, there are an estimated 4,000 mills in the US today, producing more than half a million puppies a year. I don’t want my dog sent to a puppy mill! Don’t worry, your dog won’t go to a puppy mill. Puppy mill dogs that are used for breeding are born at puppy mills most of the time. There is no way that
When you see all those cute little puppies in the pet shop, do you ever wonder where the puppy was born? Who his or her parents were? How the puppy was raised for the first weeks of his/her life? Do you picture a loving home where a healthy mother dog gives birth to a litter of puppies in a warm, soft place, where they are loved and treated well until they are taken to the pet shop where the employees are trained to give them proper care and put their health above profit? Think again. Most all puppies sold in pet shops are not looked on as living feeling beings, but as merchandise. Puppy mills are assembly lines, pure and simple, and the mother dogs and puppies are not treated as living beings, but like so many widgets, only there to make a profit. Mother dogs are kept in small, often filthy cages, with wire floors, stacked on top of one another so that excrement drops from the top cages through to the lower cages. The mothers are continually impregnated beginning at an early age for y
by Beverly B. Passe About the author: Beverly Passe is a breeder and exhibitor of Maltese dogs for more than 35 years. The “House of Myi” is located in Gig Harbor, Washington. Her hard work and dedication to the Maltese breed has produced many Best in Show winners as well receiving numerous awards throughout the years. “Puppy Mill” is not a term I like to use because of the lack of definition. Personally, I feel saddened seeing any animal living in cages–but that is me. Personally, I feel saddened seeing any living thing devalued by looking at it only in monetary terms–but that is me. I’m sure that out there somewhere there is a “clean” puppy mill just as there are clean butcher shops and clean concentration camps. “Clean” is not the issue. My father who has passed on spent many hours teaching me that all living things are valuable that even the most lowly slug leaves a silvery trail to brighten our day and that we should respect and love the world around us. He taught me that the wo
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