Puppy Mills: Animal Cruelty That Needs to End
Stop the Mistreatment of Innocent Puppies
Dec 25, 2008
Puppy mills are breeding facilities that produce purebred puppies in large numbers and sell them to pet stores. These breeders are only looking to make a profit. "They disregard the physical and emotional health of the dogs, resulting in puppies who can suffer from severe physical and emotional ailments, or even die," said Kathleen Summers, the Program Assistant at the Humane Society.
According to the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, there are roughly 500,000 puppies being sold to pet stores a year and owners are lying about where their dogs came from in order to make a sale. This is becoming a huge problem in the pet industry, which is leaving people baffled as to why people are not doing anything about this.
In 1996, Congress passed the Animal Welfare Act, which states certain minimum standards of care for dogs and cats bred for commercial resale. The Humane Society has inspection records, which shows many USDA-licensed breeders are getting away with multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act. "These violators are not fined nor are their licenses suspended," said Summers.
One of the organizations that the Humane Society works with is Pet Shop Puppies where Kim Townsend, 43, spends 60 hours a week "working to educate the public about the commercial dog industry" from home without pay. "I realized I needed to reach out to the pet shop puppy buyers and explain to them the process that allows puppy mills to flourish. They needed to understand the origin of their puppy," said Townsend.
One of the strategies Summers is working on is by investigating these breeders. "If our budget increases, there is always a need to hire more undercover investigators," Summers Said. There about 10,000 puppy mills in the country and the Humane Society "could hire 100 new investigators tomorrow and it still wouldn't be enough," she said.
22-year-old Brice Harader-Pate worked for the Humane Society-where she clocked in over 1,000 volunteer hours-and about five times a year she would go to underground puppy auctions where owners of the puppy mills were taking their "retired" and "hot breeding" dogs to auction them off. "The Humane Society will go undercover as puppy breeders to buy as many dogs as they can and bring them back to the Humane Society and take care of them," Harader-Pate said.
Harader-Pate has rescued about 25-40 dogs every auction. There is one dog that stands out in her mind. "There was this silky terrier that we purchased for about $35. We named her Amy and she was so scared. She didn't understand what being petted was and every time we reached down to pet her or pick her up she jerked and thought she was going to get hit," said Harader-Pate. She even said Amy has probably never seen grass because when she would walk, she walked like she had socks on, "she picked her feet up really high like a cat walking on water," she said
Even with all the hard work that Summers and Harader-Pate have done to educate people, Townsend doesn't think that it will be enough because there will always be people who ignore the animals' suffering and just want to have a puppy with no questions asked. "They don't care how much the adult dogs suffer to produce that puppy, they are only thinking of themselves," she said.
Currently Summers is working to fight puppy mills on all possible levels, including outreach, investigations, litigation and public awareness campaigns. "As a nonprofit organization, the Humane Society is not a government or law enforcement agency, so we don't have the authority to police or regulate puppy mills that are on private property," Summers said.
The Humane Society has always been a defender of stronger laws to address cruelty to animals and Summers encourages all constituents to get involved. "But even if stronger legislation is passed, there will still be unscrupulous breeders, so it is still up to the public to make sure they know who they are buying from by meeting their breeder in person and visiting their facility to see how the dogs are living," Summers said.
When it comes to puppies, Summers lives by one rule. Never buy a puppy from a middleman, such as a pet store or Internet broker." "We recommend going to an animal shelter if you want to get a really great pet without supporting a puppy mill. That is where I got all my dogs," Summers said.
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