Damaged dogs plucked from the assembly line

Enforcement moves to state, local levels
If you have ever wondered where pet shops get all those cute little puppies, the answer is places like Hillsville. Animal rescue workers say the network of secret puppy mills numbers in the thousands nationwide, most maintaining fewer than 200 dogs but some much larger.

The scale of the industry has been highlighted by a series of prominent raids in the last few weeks, many driven by tips derived from Humane Society and ASPCA investigations:

• In Independence, Va., the owner of a suspected puppy mill faces a court hearing Dec. 17 on multiple animal welfare charges after county animal control officials seized 20 puppies, which they said she was breeding and selling for $400 apiece. “The conditions there, stated in a single word: deplorable,” said Glen Richardson, a Grayson County animal control officer. The puppies had parasites and had been eating food meant for adult dogs; three died from severe malnutrition.
• In Honey Brook, Pa., the local SPCA took in about 24 dogs from a suspected puppy mill after it went to court for a warrant. The facility was not heated, and the dogs had dental and skin conditions. SPCA workers said they suspected more dogs had been at the facility but were removed before the raid Saturday.
• Late last month, 78 malnourished puppies of many breeds, some of them 20 to 40 pounds underweight, were removed from a licensed kennel in Lehigh County, Pa. “Their backbones are all showing,” said Harry Brown III of the Animal Rescue League in nearby Berks County, who said some of the puppies were suffering from an infection from drinking stagnant water.
• And Wisconsin animal control officials took custody of nine dogs and threatened to shut down a facility where dozens more were housed after viewing videotape shot by NBC affiliate WGBA-TV of Green Bay. On the tape, which was shot in early November and shared with Shawano County sheriff’s officers, dozens of dogs can be seen crammed into small crates stacked atop one another, so that dogs on top were allowed to urinate and defecate on dogs and their food below.

In recent months, raids have become frequent enough that shelters are struggling to keep up with rescued animals, said Rhonda Lowe, president of Schnauzer Rescue in Holly Springs, N.C.

What you can do Animal welfare activists urge families looking to acquire a pet to consider these steps: — Make adoption your first choice. Visit your local shelter; if you have your heart set on a purebred dog, remember that an estimated 1 in 4 shelter dogs is purebred. — Don’t buy your puppy from a pet store or the Internet. Many commercial retail dogs come from puppy mills through third-party brokers. — Know how to recognize a responsible breeder. Good breeders care about their animals and will let you see their living spaces and records. They will ask you as many questions as you ask them. — Lobby for better laws. Let your federal and state legislators know you’re concerned about the treatment of dogs in puppy mills. Ask your member of Congress to support expanding the Animal Welfare Act to include kennels that sell large numbers of puppies directly to the public. Sources: American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Humane Society of the United States.

“If they’re suddenly flooded with a thousand dogs, they may not have the room or resources to care for that number of dogs,” she said.

Still, “it’s not even the tip of the iceberg,” said Rhea Aker, who has rescued more than 1,000 dogs through the nonprofit organization Destiny’s Rescue of Loveland, Ohio. “Last year, 7 million puppies were produced in puppy mills.”

The Humane Society more conservatively estimates that, each year, 2 million to 4 million new pets are the products of puppy mills, most of them in eight states: Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The society’s investigation in Virginia uncovered hundreds of substandard operations, leading it to warn that Virginia was likely to join the list of the worst offenders.

For retailers, a perception problem
Many commercial dog breeders treat their animals according to the law, but the biggest are still large farms of yapping dogs lined up in cage after cage, even if they are clean and well-fed. Pet retailers say they can understand why animal lovers could be turned off by even legitimate operations.

“People are going to see all those dogs in cages and think, ‘I wouldn’t want to live in those conditions. ... I wouldn’t want to live in a cage,’ ” said Joe Street, vice president of Uncle Bill’s Pet Centers, the largest pet store chain in Central Indiana, where a thriving industry is known as the puppy breeding capital of Indiana.

Often, a retailer can’t tell you where the animal you’re buying came from, because sales are often brokered by middlemen who do business in places like Hillsville and Daviess County, a quiet Central Indiana farming community two hours southwest of Indianapolis.

Dozens of large-scale kennels operate in towns like Odon and Loogootee, where breeder dogs live out their lives in cages. The kennels are not advertised. Many are tucked behind picturesque farmhouses well away from publicly traveled dirt roads. Inside, cage after cage is filled with dogs whose sole purpose is to breed puppies.

From the breeding farms, puppies are loaded inside small cages in cargo vans to be delivered to pet stores, which can be hours away.

“When they leave here, we’ve got no idea where they’re going,” said a Daviess County breeder, who asked not to be identified when contacted by NBC affiliate WTHR-TV of Indianapolis.

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