September 20th is Puppy Mill Awareness Day
September 20th is Puppy Mill Awareness Day. Please help us celebrate by getting involved. Participation can be something as simple as hanging up a flyer about puppy mills at a local business or sending a letter to the editor or telling a friend or relative about the realities of puppy mills. If you educate just one person, you’ve contributed to Puppy Mill Awareness Day and brought us closer to a day when there are no more puppy mills.
Many people don’t realize the harsh realities of puppy mills: “A puppy mill is a facility that continuously breeds female dogs, housing them and their puppies in deplorable conditions. Inadequate food, water, sanitation, constant exposure to the elements and dilapidated housing are commonplace. Because of these inhumane conditions, many puppies sold from these mills suffer from chronic physical ailments and may be fearful of people and other animals. These inhumane and abusive conditions have been the subjects of television reports and newspaper articles nationwide” (Doris Day Animal League).
More and more Americans are buying puppies online and suffering the consequences. The American Pet Product Manufacturers Association reports more than 200,000 American households bought puppies online in 2004, many for prices ranging from $500 to $5,000. “It’s not uncommon for a puppy to be bred in Missouri, sold through an Internet site with a Pennsylvania address and delivered to a family in Colorado,” explains DDAL Legislative Director Sara Amundson. “Given the pervasive use of the Internet to sell puppies across state lines and the rise in Internet ‘brokers’ to facilitate sales, there is no way for buyers to know under what conditions the puppies are kept,” Amundson adds. “Consumers have more information on the safety of a mattress they’ve purchased online than the background of a living, breathing puppy.”
Puppy mills are nothing new. These mass dog-breeding operations have been around for decades. They continue to thrive because they prey on unwitting consumers who are smitten by too-cute-for-words puppies in pet store windows and on fancy websites, but behind the friendly facade of the local pet shop, the pastoral scenes on a “breeder’s” website, or the neighborhood newspaper ad, there often lies a puppy mill. These canine breeding facilities house dogs in shockingly poor conditions.
Life is particularly bad for “breeding stock,” dogs who live their entire lives in cages and are continually bred for years, without human companionship and with little hope of ever becoming part of a family. These dogs receive little or no veterinary care and never see a bed, a treat or a toy. After their fertility wanes, breeding animals are commonly killed, abandoned or sold to another mill. The annual result of all this breeding is hundreds of thousands of puppies, many with behavior and/or health problems.
Alternatives to buying a pet online or from a pet store
breed may be waiting for you at the shelter.
Do your part to help stop Puppy Mills and the inhumane breeding of dogs. Although it’s virtually impossible to know where your pet came from, one way to be sure you are not supporting a Puppy Mill is to adopt your pet from your local animal shelter or Humane Society. For more information or to adopt today, please call the shelter at 228-863-4394.
