A local news station in Denver, Colorado recently aired a piece about the rescue of 90 dogs from a puppy mill in Missouri. A group called Mill Dog Rescue has set up agreements with various puppy mill owners to take all of their unwanted dogs. These are the animals that are injured, deformed, sick, or just too old to be sold to pet stores. Usually, the puppy mill owners will compile this list of dogs that they are intent on destroying and will gladly give Mill Dog Rescue all of these animals instead of killing them. The group has set up these delicate arrangements in the hope of saving all of the dogs that they can, and allowing most, if not all, of the dogs rescued to have a chance at a quality life with a loving family.
This piece showed some of the deplorable conditions that these dogs have lived in their entire lives. By far, the biggest act of cruelty dispensed by these puppy mill owners is to the female dogs that are bred repetitively until they die. The second biggest act of cruelty is the fact that these puppy mill owners do not even give basic care to these dogs. They have no shelter from winter cold or summer heat, they are not fed well, and they do not receive any veterinary care. These are the puppies that end up in pet stores all over this country. Statistics have shown that almost 98% of all puppies sold at pet stores come from puppy mills. Statistics also show that over 2.7 million dogs were killed last year for no other reason than there are too many of them and not enough families to adopt them. Puppy mill owners are breeding multitudes of dogs and then killing the overstock. Does this make any sense to anyone?
This type of business is not illegal in most states and this problem is reaching epidemic proportions especially in the Midwest in states like Missouri and Arkansas. Pennsylvania is also a state in which these acts of cruelty are occurring and lawmakers have not reacted with any type of urgency because they are afraid of the repercussions to their campaign contributions from the agricultural lobbyists who obviously do not want to see this business abolished. These dogs are considered to be livestock, and as such, can be treated very poorly because why does anyone care about the treatment of livestock?
Well, I was raised on a ranch and farm, and I can say that the majority of ranch families in the area where I grew up did not even treat their livestock (cattle, pigs, chickens, etc…) this badly even though these animals were often destined for slaughter, so I do not believe there is any excuse for this cruelty. I believe that no animals should be mistreated, slaughter bound or not, and dogs are not animals destined for slaughter and should not be lumped into this category. We all need to let our lawmakers and the agricultural lobbyists know that we will not tolerate this type of animal cruelty. Please notify your representatives that you will not tolerate these businesses to continue.
There are also other ways to fight this problem. First and foremost, do not buy a puppy or dog from a pet store. Adopt a puppy or dog from a shelter instead. If people would stop buying from pet stores, the stores would have no reason to sell puppies, so this would stop puppy mill owners from having a pipeline of income from pet stores that buy these dogs.
Secondly, tell everyone you know about this issue. For more information go to www.milldogrescue.org and www.prisonersofgreed.org to see just how badly these dogs are treated. These sites make it easy for you to send an e-mail to lawmakers to tell them you’re disgusted by this cruelty. To view the piece done by the Denver newsstation go to www.cbs4denver.com and find the puppy mill story.
Sometimes all we can do to solve a problem is to educate ourselves and to make our voices heard. Remember-If lawmakers receive thousands of letters regarding this subject, they will take notice. Please help abolish puppy mills forever.
