Animal Writings

PUPPY MILLS

Think about how you felt physically and emotionally the last time you were limited to a small area for only a few hours--taking the SATs, a long car ride, flying on an airplane, sitting through a day-long conference. Antsy? Claustrophobic? Like you would scream if you had to sit there for another day? Now think about having that sensation FOR YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. That is the horrible fate of breeding dogs confined to small cages virtually from birth till death in thousands of commercial breeding facilities, commonly known as puppy mills.

A puppy mill is a facility, large or small, that breeds dogs for profit. These facilities are notorious for ignoring the dogs' physical and emotional needs. The dogs go crazy from boredom, and their bodies waste away. Dogs are usually prized for their boundless enthusiasm and zest for life, but in puppy mills, they receive no compassion, and their spirits are broken. They live and die in pain and misery.

How do you tell if a pet store gets puppies from puppy mills? First of all, pet stores that have a large selection of purebred puppies (say, 20 to 30) year-round are almost guaranteed to be getting dogs from this type of facility, since otherwise they would not be assured of a constant supply.

Second, people who care about puppies look for good homes for them. They do not ship them off to be sold in pet stores.

A third indication that a pet store's puppies are mass-produced in puppy mills is if pet store employees are reluctant to tell you the name of the breeder or where the breeder's facility is located. They may say they get puppies from "private breeders." Puppy mills ARE private breeders. Our local Petland has cited a "strict privacy policy" regarding its breeders. On registration papers provided to customers, it has in several cases, and most likely in many other cases, failed to provide any information about the dog's breeder.

In Virginia, THIS IS ILLEGAL! Section 3.1-796.78 states that pet dealers who sell dogs with registration papers--such as AKC papers--must provide the NAME and ADDRESS of its breeders. Most likely, Petland fears that customers who see Missouri, Kansas, and other Midwestern addresses will think "puppy mills," since the Midwest is "Puppy Mill Central" in the United States. If you or anyone you know purchased a puppy at the Fairfax Petland and received papers that do not contain the breeder's name and address, PLEASE contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com.

In the case of Petland, there is clear evidence that Petland has obtained puppies from puppy mills. During an April 2000 Dateline NBC exposé of puppy mills and pet stores, investigators visited two of Petland's "private breeders." One facility housed over 500 dogs; the other, 200 dogs, all in cages. During their investigation at the first breeder, Dateline investigators never saw the dogs let out of the cages, but they did find dogs with neurotic behavior caused by long confinement. They saw filth on and around the dogs, maggot-infested food, timid dogs housed together with aggressive dogs, untreated wounds, broken bones, mange, open sores, and rotted teeth--conditions causing the dogs tremendous pain and long-term suffering.

A former truck driver for the second Petland breeder told Dateline of how her boss ordered her to throw live puppies into a trash burner because they were sick. A sickly puppy purchased at a Petland store was traced to a third facility housing over 200 dogs. That puppy had expensive health problems including hip dysplasia and chronic diarrhea. This is not surprising, as puppy mills are also known for breeding animals with genetic defects as well as breeding dogs as often as possible, causing the mother to wear out and die young after producing many litters of sickly puppies.

After the story aired, generating a huge response from the public, Petland refused to be interviewed by Dateline. Petland merely sent a letter claiming the story was "unfair" and apparently did not pledge to change its operations in any way. If you would like to borrow a copy of the Dateline video, contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com.

Petland openly states on its website that it obtains many dogs from USDA-licensed breeders, as if this ensures a certain level of quality and humane care. Is that the case? The USDA requires that anyone with 3 or more breeding dogs who sells animals to pet stores be licensed. It has minimal requirements regarding food, water, sanitation, and space, but enforcement of the USDA's regulations is extremely lax. For example, the USDA requires that the commercial breeders have an exercise plan for the dogs, but they do not make sure that the plan is ever carried out. If more than one dog is housed in a cage, the dogs are not required to ever be let out at all. The USDA's head veterinarian, Ron de Haven, admits that only about half of the roughly 4,000 USDA-licensed facilities even meet USDA's minimum regulations, a disgraceful example of the USDA's failure to enforce existing animal-protection laws.

De Haven attributes this failure to the USDA not having enough inspectors, but even when the inspectors find problems, fining and closing down puppy mills is very rare. The USDA's mission is to support agriculture, and apparently it considers puppy mill owners to be "dog farmers" worthy of its protection. Bottom line: if you buy a puppy from Petland or other pet stores, it's very likely that his or her parents are enduring a lifetime of cruelty.

Petland's puppies also usually come with some kind of registration papers, such as AKC (American Kennel Club). Many people are under the false impression that this means the parent dogs are in good health. As the AKC will tell you itself, that is not true. The papers only mean that the two parent dogs were of the same breed, and the AKC takes the breeder's word that that is the case. (The sickly Petland puppy featured in the Dateline story turned out not even to be a purebred.) Parent dogs can be toothless, lame, undernourished, have serious genetic defects, and still have their litters of puppies registered with the AKC.

Haphazard breeding can result in both physical and behavioral problems. For example, one woman we met had purchased a puppy from the Burke Pet Center, which like Petland obtains puppies from the Hunte Corporation. Although she has successfully housetrained many dogs, she has never been able to fully housetrain this one.

IN-STORE CONDITIONS

Petland's broker (middleman between breeders and pet stores), the Hunte Corporation, is based in Missouri, often considered the puppy mill capital of the country due to its large concentration of puppy mills. Other states with many puppy mills include Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania (especially Lancaster County).

After collecting puppies from many Midwestern breeding facilities, weeding out the sickliest ones to suffer an uncertain fate--most likely death--the Hunte Corporation packs caged puppies into its trucks and drives them to Petlands and other pet stores all over the country, usually a stressful trip of several hundred miles. At the store, having spent their whole life of 8 weeks in cages, the puppies again spend most of their time in small cages.

According to veterinarians, the confinement of large numbers of animals to a small store, with new animals being added all the time, is an invitation to rampant infectious disease. The neatly stacked rows of cages at Petland resemble isolation chambers--ideal for driving people and animals crazy, but not a proper environment for animals adapted to life on this planet through millions of years of evolution. The barren cages do not allow the puppy to experience the outdoors, where a normally developing puppy would be able to see the sky, feel the sun and wind, and run and play with human and canine companions in the dirt and grass and leaves. Small cages do not provide a rich indoor environment for the puppies to explore. Rarely do the puppies ever have a soft surface to lie on, although even in the wild, animals seek out soft nesting spots. All Petland puppies have is a mesh-floored cage (uncomfortable for their feet), maybe a single chew toy, and, if they're lucky, a hard floor tile, about 1 foot by 1 foot, that is supposed to serve as their bed. The sad faces of the puppies entice well-meaning visitors into "rescuing" puppies by buying them, even for the outrageous prices of well over $1,000 per puppy that Petland usually charges (the adoption fee for dogs at our local shelter is $85). Of course, each time they sell a puppy, Petland orders more from the Hunte Corp.--approximately 25 puppies each week for one Petland store.

Since Petland's cages are standardized, one might assume that they are in compliance with all state anti-cruelty laws as well as laws that prohibit the sale of certain species, but this is not necessarily the case. The Petland in Fairfax, Virginia, was found to be in violation of the Virginia state law that prohibits pet stores from housing puppies in cages in which their feet could fall through the mesh. This went on for many months, even though it was obvious to any observer that the tiny puppies, such as Chihuahuas and Toy Rat Terriers, could only hobble painfully around their cages, their legs falling through the mesh each time they tried to move.

The Fairfax Petland also failed to consistently provide a solid resting platform until ordered to do so by Animal Control. When it did, it used one or two hard floor tiles that were still not completely solid. Some of the larger puppies, such as the Golden Retrievers, could only fit their two front legs on the tiles, not their whole body, as required by law. Recently, when a citizen reported the absence of ANY resting platforms in the cages, Petland admitted to police that it removes the platforms each night because they make a mess. This is against the law.

Petland was also selling one or more tarantulas, even though tarantulas are prohibited as pets in our county.

Puppies are by no means the only animals suffering in Petland stores. Petland also sells kittens, rabbits, parakeets, parrots, chinchillas, ferrets, hamsters, fish, and a variety of other animals. Because even fewer laws protect these animals, they most likely come from breeding and warehousing facilities even worse than puppy mills. These animals are also housed in cramped cages or aquariums at the store and are sold with a minimum of instruction on how to properly care for them. This can lead to premature death, abandonment, and for long-lived species such as parrots, many years of suffering in an inadequate environment.

People who take jobs at Petland because they love animals sooner or later find out, as one told us, "It's all about time and money." This employee saw a lot of deaths among the small animals at the Fairfax City store, particularly birds and hamsters, and saw that many of the puppies arrived with respiratory problems. The puppies also had sores from lying on the hard mesh cage floors. Another Fairfax City Petland employee tried to nurture the puppies and was told something along the lines of (not a direct quote), "They don't need petting; they're just money. If you want to do that, go to the shelter." An employee from another Petland told us that puppies are taken from their mothers at 5 weeks old and go through so much stress and handling that Petland recommends that once the puppy arrives at the store, he or she be left alone for 48 hours. Our local Petland puts puppies on display immediately, and they are available for sale about 24 hours later.

One customer of the Fairfax Petland unknowingly purchased a dog with hereditary defect that makes simple anesthesia a grave risk to the dog's life, so that any situation requiring anesthesia, even spaying or neutering, can be fatal. Another puppy purchased at the Fairfax Petland developed a cough within a couple of days. Because it was the weekend, the dog had to be taken to an emergency clinic, voiding the Petland warranty, which requires that the dog be brought to a particular vet who works with Petland. Neighbors have seen the huge truck that arrives with its weekly delivery and heard the cries of the puppies as they are unloaded.

Several local vets who have treated puppies purchased at the Fairfax Petland have stated that the many of the puppies are sick. One said, "I HATE Petland!" Another said of a Petland puppy, "This puppy is a walking time bomb." A local trainer working with Petland puppies found many of them unsocialized, extremely difficult to train, and mentally and emotionally ill.

If you purchased a sick puppy at the Fairfax Petland, please contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com. We are not going to give out names of vets, former employees, and other people who give us information about Petland unless specifically given permission. But we will encourage people to ask their vets about the health of pet-store puppies, and they will be able to confirm what these experts are saying.

HOMELESS ANIMAL CRISIS

All this abuse is made worse by the fact that it is completely unnecessary. Petland sells animals for one reason only--profit--in flagrant disregard for the homeless animal crisis not only in our local area but the entire country. In 2003, in Virginia alone, over 60,000 dogs and 73,000 cats were killed in animal shelters. Nationwide, year after year, a minimum of 3 million dogs and 4 million cats are killed in U.S. animal shelters due to lack of homes. For dogs alone, that's 6 killed every minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's estimated that a quarter of the dogs killed in shelters are purebreds. If you have trouble visualizing this tragedy because of the huge numbers of animals involved, please go to www.pleaserescueme.com/gone.cfm to see just a few of the innocent animals who have been killed simply for lack of homes.

The vast majority of the animals killed in shelters are healthy, friendly, and young. The 7 million dead does not even include the animals being killed outside shelters (for example, Greyhounds bred for racing and slaughtered when their racing days are over). While our local shelters and rescue groups struggle valiantly to rescue homeless animals, spending their energy and money to save innocent lives, Petland's contribution is to pump mass-produced animals into our community, as well as similar communities all over the country.

Because the number of small animals killed due to homelessness is not even counted at shelters, many people are unaware that there is a homeless animal crisis among small animals, too. Our local rescue groups cannot even begin to save all the rabbits, birds, ferrets, iguanas, and many other small animals that desperately need homes.

Please do not buy ANY animal at a pet store, but please do contact local shelters and rescue groups (both purebred and mixed breed groups) if you can provide an animal with a good home.