Puppy Mills

Puppy Mills

December 21, 2007, 1:20 pm
Filed under: Fall 2007

By Amanda Burke

Walking into Debbie’s Pet Land in Braintree, Mass., you feel as though you are walking into the happiest place on earth. The walls to your right are filled with bright colors and enormous posters of the cutest animals you’ve ever seen. A couple dozen bouncy, energetic puppies line the wall to the left, housed behind clean glass walls and fluorescent colored ID tags: Jack Russell Terrier, Miniature Schnauzer, American Bulldog, and the like.

Joyful Christmas music plays through the loud speaker but you can barely hear it through the squeals and laughter of the children as they frolic through the store, some of them with a puppy or two in tow. Parents do their best to corral their children into the back sitting room to play with the wriggly balls of fur, and perhaps to emerge with a new family companion.

A redheaded employee, who could barely pass for 16, greets you at the entrance wearing a big smile and a crisp blue Debbie’s polo t-shirt. “Welcome to Debbie’s Pet Land,” she says as she hands you a coupon for free obedience classes with the purchase of a puppy.

Welcome to Debbie’s Pet Land, indeed. Welcome to the puppy equivalent of Auschwitz.

When asked, the young redheaded employee, who wore a nametag that identified her only as Caitlin, could not give specifics as to where the puppies were from or as to any personal history records. She could only provide information on the puppies’ veterinary records of physicals and vaccinations and their American Kennel Club (AKC) papers verifying the animals’ purebred lineages.

When prodded to retrieve a manager, Caitlin returned with a short, stout, balding man who introduced himself as Mark, who couldn’t provide answers that were any better. He very politely explained that all of the dogs were purchased from “USDA approved breeders” or “reputable commercial breeders” but could not disclose their origins, whereabouts or give a company name. Upon research, these phrases are fancy terms commonly created by pet stores that often refer to puppy mills.

Although it has been over 30 years since an amendment to the federal Animal Welfare Act imposed minimum standards on wholesale breeders, the fact remains that life is still brutal in the mills, whose operators often refer to themselves with the much less threatening title of “dog farmers.”

Numerous eyewitness accounts from puppy mill raids describe animals being fed maggot-infested food and confined to chicken coops filled with their own excrement. The pups, who virtually all suffer from various skin infections and open sores, receive very primitive or most often no veterinary care. Kennel cough, diarrhea, parasites, and chronic ear infections are routine.

Private animal rights investigator, Jamie Reno was recently hired to report her findings of one puppy mill in Kansas. She says, “I’ve seen so many things, from bleeding paws to absolutely filthy dogs, especially the popular breeds with longer hair, like Pomeranians and Yorkies and so forth. But the most disturbing thing for me is the behavior of the dogs. They don’t behave like your dog or my dog. They are wary of humans. They want to reach out and want your attention, but they’re afraid of you at the same time. There’s the endless circling in cages, which indicates that the dog is not well adjusted. It’s the consequence of living in a small cage his whole life.”

Moreover, the puppies have not been socialized and tend to act in other disturbing and aggressive ways, making them poor companion animals and uncharacteristically poor pets. They are touted as purebred, but their lineage is often haphazardly inbred, resulting in eye and heart abnormalities, hip dysplasia, and other genetically linked health problems.

Life is undoubtedly miserable for the puppies but, incredibly, is still worse for their mothers. “They are kept in tiny cages their entire lives and receive no care and are inadequately nourished,” says Doug Hanbicki, a companion animal specialist for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The dogs are bred during their first heat and continually for every six months thereafter until their reproductive capacity drops at the age of four or five usually because their reproductive organs have been virtually ripped out from being overworked; then they are mercilessly killed, asserts Hanbicki and others working for the reform of animal abuse.

Dozens of pet stores around the United States sell approximately 3,000 of Wallace Havens’ cute, tiny puppies every year. His kennel in Wisconsin, called Puppy Haven, sells these pups to stores in New York, Florida, California and in major cities in the Midwest, supplying puppy-hungry customers with the trendy “designer” mixed breeds of every possible sort, from Puggles, to Chugs, Bugs, Doodles and even his newest blend, the “Mini St. Bernard.” Wallace Havens averages a gross profit of $900,000 per year made by selling puppies to the public.
But things are not as idyllic at Puppy Haven as pet store customers and future dog owners would like to believe. Anyone faced with a frighteningly cute little bundle in a pet store would like to believe that he or she really did come from a “good breeder”. But if the customer is staring into the face of a Puppy Haven dog, that little one’s mom and dad are still living at a facility designed for mass-producing pups; one with several USDA violations for unacceptable housing conditions; one that was suspended last August from the American Kennel Club for ten years due to unacceptable care and living conditions. Is this really the place pets should come from?

Terri Woodcock, of Wisconsin Retired Breeders Rescue, knows exactly where those puppies in pet shops come from. Several years ago she called Puppy Haven and asked what they did with dogs who couldn’t breed anymore. Wallace Havens told Terri that she could take his castoff dogs for a flat fee of $50 apiece. In the past several years, Havens has called Terri every few months to say he has some dogs for her—usually anywhere from six to twelve. These are the ones with congenital defects, sick mothers and puppies, ones who can’t breed anymore, and some with less than show dog qualities which the pet stores won’t always take.

That’s how Terri took in a Labradoodle who needed $2300 in vet care to repair her ectopic ureters (she constantly dribbled urine before surgery), a Lhasa/Shih Tzu puppy named Bentley who had paralyzed back legs, and even puppies so riddled with bacteria and disease that they died soon after Terri got them to her vet.

Puppy Haven now has an area where people can come in and pick out puppies—straight from breeder to customer. This is the only area of the kennel that Terri or anyone from the public has seen, and she said that, at least that section is not the horrific puppy mill scene that many are. But it is also set up just for visitors. Terri said, “It’s just a huge operation where the dogs are treated like cattle. They don’t get any socialization.”

If Puppy Haven has 14 employees to care for their current 1600 in-house dogs (which they do), that means that even if they all worked full time (which they don’t—some are part time), each would be in charge of 114 dogs every day. Calculate that out in a forty hour work week, those employees are working a total of 560 hours (which, again, they aren’t since some are part time). That means that each day, in order to care for 1600 dogs, employees can spend three minutes individually on each dog.

That’s also assuming that every minute of the eight-hour work day is spent directly caring for the dogs—no answering phones, no lunch or bathroom breaks, no stopping for anything. Is less than three minutes a day enough time to spend on a dog?

The continuation of such appalling conditions is cause for anger and consternation across a wide spectrum of animal lovers. But after many years of fighting back, advocates at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) have come to the conclusion that there is no simple solution. “Action is needed at every level,” Peter Gollub, director of the MSPCA law enforcement reports, “from the top echelons of government to the eager buyer at the suburban mall.”

Both government officials and representatives of advocacy groups concede that, despite damaging revelations over the past decade, puppy mills continue to operate with near impunity. There are 4,000 licensed commercial dog breeders and brokers in the United States, and many do not come close to the standards set by those who really care about the pets they produce.

“The puppies are raised as a commodity, for profit, and by its very nature it will be a deficient upbringing,” Gollub says. “If you have 20, 30, or 40 litters at a time, it is not physically possible to meet the needs of those animals.”

Nonetheless, a mere handful of the mills see their licenses suspended or revoked in any given year, a situation noted even by groups that represent pet-shop owners. One such organization is the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, which maintains that humane officials, abetted by sensationalized news stories, have created an inaccurate picture that is “based on the transgressions of a few.”

Mandy Roan, 21, of Whitman, Mass. knows how difficult it is to ignore those little puppies tugging at your heartstrings. She purchased Bailey, her young Pekinese puppy from a Western Massachusetts pet store, of which she couldn’t recall the name. Mandy was unaware of the issues surrounding puppy mills and at the time she purchased Bailey, she was so infatuated with his puppy cuteness that she never would have imagined that he could have come from such a horrible place.

Although unable to confirm her puppy’s origins, Bailey’s poor initial health alludes to being born from less than desirable conditions. However after receiving information about puppy mills from her veterinarian, Mandy sees the error in her ways.

“I wish I had done more research before I bought a dog. Although, I may have bought him anyways because I would feel so guilty that he would have ever been in that situation to begin with.”
Mandy is not alone in her thinking. Many owners purchased their animals to ‘save’ them from their environment, yet ultimately these purchases increase the demand for which the pet stores must continue to supply.
But the public can combat puppy mills. The action that would have the most drastic results would be for everyone to get dogs from shelters instead of pet stores and online. Also to be educated when it comes to adding a pet into their life.

Jamie Reno explains, “People first need to educate themselves and realize that when you are buying a puppy at a pet store or flea market or auction or on a Web site, you are supporting these cruel puppy mills. People need to write letters to editors and contact their politicians and show their concern. The laws and standards have to be changed. It actually all comes down to consumers. People really should know better.”

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