If there’s anything worse than death for animals, it’s life at the hands of a puppy mill breeder. Dogs suffer inconceivable cruelty at the hands of people who breed them for profit. The Humane Society of the U.S. estimates there are 10,000 puppy mills in America, though no one knows the real number because the internet has made it possible for thousands of backyard breeders to sell online with no oversight of the business.
When the USDA passed an amendment to require online sellers to become licensed, only 300 came forward. People who torture animals for a living are not going to step out of the shadows. Before they make it to the stores, 8-week-old puppies are snatched from mothers who are sick and stressed from being bred every time they come into heat. In addition to reproducing until their bodies wear out, these parents of puppies live in houses of horror where most of them never see the light of day. Rescue for dogs comes only when someone learns about the unbelievable suffering and reports it. Take the case in nearby Cabarrus County last year.
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The stench overpowered authorities as they entered the property. Inside the house a maze of cat crates lined every flat surface. In the basement investigators found dozens of dogs in wire cages with their fur matted so badly in their own excrement that it was hard to tell one breed from another. Back upstairs on a dark porch were dogs blinded by cataracts and corneal ulcers, some with their jaws half-gone, or missing entirely where their teeth had rotted away. Their paws were soaked in urine and their legs were deformed from squatting on wire for their entire lives. Some were so feeble they couldn’t stand.
Out back, a dirt trail led to a cinder-block building where they found 50 to 60 more dogs that had never spent a day outside. John Goodwin, director of the puppy mills campaign for HSUS and who was on this raid, said that almost every puppy sold in pet stores in America comes from this kind of suffering.
The HSUS estimates that roughly half of the 2 million puppies bred in puppy mills are sold in stores; the rest are trafficked online. Most websites give no clue about where a breeder is based. Web brokers sell many breeders’ dogs and use roughly 800 domain names to lure buyers into thinking they’re purchasing puppies from responsible breeders. The truth is that any amateur can sell dogs out of their basement and make steady money for years.
The federal Animal Welfare Act enacted in 1966 sets down the barest of standards for breeders. Dogs can be kept their entire lives in crates just inches bigger than their bodies and bred as many times as they come into heat. Charged with inspecting breeders, the USDA has 100 inspectors to cover thousands of breeders in 50 states.
Over the past decade groups like HSUS, the ASPCA and CAPS (Companion Animal Protection Society) have conducted stings of pet stores across the country and found them packed with sick puppies. There are even “puppy brokers,” wholesalers who buy from breeders and ship puppies for a hefty markup. One such broker, the now-defunct Hunte Corporation in Missouri, moved thousands of dogs a month from their facility to stores. The dogs that proved too sick to sell were sent back to Hunte, which buried thousands of pounds of dead puppies behind their plant.
So what can people who have a soul do about such tragedy?
» Report the people who cause this unbearable suffering.
» Stop buying purebred dogs. Adopt instead. Petco and PetSmart stores stopped selling dogs and cats years ago. Instead, they partner with rescue groups to show dogs and cats for adoption.
» Look on websites like Petfinder and Adopt-a-Pet that post thousands of rescued dogs and cats for adoption, including full breed animals.
Laws are so poor that in most cases those guilty rarely do jail time, but they can be shut down. If no one buys these puppies, the monsters who cause all this suffering and death will be out of business.
Lynda Garibaldi is president of Cats’ Cradle.