PUPPY MILLS AND PET STORES
- Friday, June 19 2020 @ 10:27 pm UTC
- Contributed by: erik
- Views: 1,236
THE TRUTH ABOUT PET STORES
ADOPT DON'T SHOP BUYING A PET AT A STORE LIKE PETLAND OR ANY PUPPY MILL STORE
BY ERIK HOFFER
The opinions here on puppy mills and pet stores are strictly my own. My distain for these organizations comes from years of seeing the damage they do to dog breeds, to individual dogs and to families who buy these defective animals. Many families after spending thousands of dollars (needlessly) on a pet only find out that they need to spend thousands more to get it healthy.
Today I had a tremendous family dog ready to go to a family with a few kids. The dog was coming out of a divorce and was seven years old. A seven year old German shepherd is a dog truly in his or her prime. A dog at 7 coming out of a family with kids is by far a well adjusted social animal, able to cope with chaos and be stable when the kids are throwing a fit or are out of control. Most sheps who have lived with families their entire life turn out to be excellent and loyal family members.
When I presented the dog to the family during a phone call, I was informed that they had just gotten a puppy dog from Petland the week before. They were hesitant to tell me even though I had made plans for them to get a dog from us. They will have a long road ahead or sure.
Pet stores throughout the USA get their dogs from mass breeding farms primarily in PA, MO, UT and in states where there are limited laws and no oversight into the cruel and harsh conditions that they are bred under. Many dogs never touch the ground and are bred and whelped in a crate in racks in warehouse conditions. Once ready to be distributed these dogs are put into trucks and dropped off like laundry to stores. The breeders rely on stores to worm them and do not consider their inbreeding or health to be very important factors in filling orders for dogs. The mother dogs of all breeds are frequently killed or dumped on the street when breeding years expire. This is especially true in the South and we see it here in dogs in the Miami are rural central FL areas.
The puppy that the family got somehow has a cool; set of ‘papers’ which are less useful than toilet tissue as the info is pure bull s..t. The new owner is assured of the championship qualities of their new puppy by a salesman whose experience with dogs involved cleaning up poop and washing kennels. The cost of $3500-$5000 also makes me sick, since a rescue pup is about $350-$700. The new owner of the puppy has to then get the dog its shots and of course a spay or neuter, where rescues get that done for them as part of the adoption fee. The pet store dog can be from a sire and bitch whose hips are bad, whose health is horrendous or who will have behavioral issues. Most are inbred leading to more severe health issues. These dogs can be predisposed to be what their breeding made them, which is more often than not a problem in hips, nervous systems, limbs and digestive systems. In this case the family had the puppy for 1 week and during that first week the dog had an ear infection and a stomach issue both requiring medical attention and both costing the owner another $400 in vet bills. When asked who is responsible, the pet store explained to them that since they didn’t buy the ‘dog health guaranty’ that they were responsible.
Dealing with these dirt bags is bad enough, but to add insult to injury is the norm in the puppy mill and pet store business. Supporting these pieces of crap forces inbreeding in all breeds of dogs and cats and diminishes the quality of the breed exponentially. These puppy mills turn out ‘designer breeds’ as well and because of their lack of knowledge and compassion for the animals frequently turn out litter after litter of dogs who are deformed and or are defective and then destroyed. I find the Chinese to be one of the lowest ethnic groups in their breeding domestic dogs for food, but the harm done to dogs of all breeds here in the USA by these puppy mills surely equals that repulsive level.
Some published facts about puppy mills in the USA are:
1. A puppy mill is a commercial dog-breeding facility that focuses on increasing profit with little overhead cost. The health and welfare of the animals is not a priority.
2. Female dogs are bred at every opportunity with little to no recovery time between litters. When, after a few years, they are physically depleted to the point that they no longer can reproduce, breeding females are often killed.
3. Every year in America, it's estimated that 2.11 million puppies are sold that originated from puppy mills, while 3 million are killed in shelters because they are too full and there aren’t enough adoptive homes. Act as a publicist for your local animal shelter to encourage your community to adopt shelter pets.
4. In puppy mills, dogs can spend most of their lives in cramped cages, with no room to play or exercise.
5. Often times, the water and food provided for the puppies is contaminated, crawling with bugs. Puppies can even be malnourished and therefore do not grow normally.
6. Puppies in mills are found with bleeding or swollen paws, feet falling through the wire cages, severe tooth decay in smaller breeds, ear infections, dehydration, and lesions on their eyes, which often lead to blindness.
7. In most states, puppy mills are legal albeit that many states have outlawed pet stores as a means to distribute these animals to the public. It is important that future pet owners seek rescue dogs from their local shelter or buy pets from a trusted professional breeder in order to put mills out of business. No reputable breeder would ever sell a puppy through a pet store hence all of the BS paperwork you get from these stores is truly a fabrication.
8. It is estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. Fewer than 3,000 of these are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
9. Most puppy mills have no veterinary care, climate control, or protection for the animals from weather (hot, cold, rain, or snow).
10. With limited or no regulations or enforcement, puppy mills have no cleanup control. This means that dogs can be living in urine and feces for indefinite periods of time.
11. It's common to find dogs in puppy mills with collars that have been fastened so tightly that they have become embedded in a dog’s neck and must be carefully cut out.
12. There are approximately 10,000 puppy mills in the US.
13. Almost all puppies sold in stores come from puppy mills.
14. Over a million puppies were produced yearly by licensed facilities in the US.
15. 30 people were infected with Campylobacter jejuni; the disease was contracted by puppies in a pet store.
16. California was the very first state to ban retail pet sales, puppy mill statistics from 2017 reveal.
17. There are about 167,388 breeding dogs in facilities licensed by the USDA.
18. Each female dog gives birth to 9.4 puppies on average every year.
19. Missouri has the most (so-called) problem puppy mills for 7 years straight.
20. Dog brokers pay anywhere between $50 and $150 per puppy from puppy mills and sell them for $2000 to $7500 each.
21. A staggering 2.4 million puppies produced by licensed and unlicensed puppy mills are sold each year.
General Puppy Mill Statistics
Many people don’t realize that mass breeders produce nearly all of the animals in pet stores, not just puppies. Usually, these animals are bred as livestock in deplorable conditions. They lack veterinary attention, socialization, and the puppies produced in such circumstances quite often have either chronic illnesses or die shortly after being purchased from the pet store. The more aware people are of where puppies in pet stores actually come from, the better.
ADOPT DON'T SHOP BUYING A PET AT A STORE LIKE PETLAND OR ANY PUPPY MILL STORE
BY ERIK HOFFER
The opinions here on puppy mills and pet stores are strictly my own. My distain for these organizations comes from years of seeing the damage they do to dog breeds, to individual dogs and to families who buy these defective animals. Many families after spending thousands of dollars (needlessly) on a pet only find out that they need to spend thousands more to get it healthy.
Today I had a tremendous family dog ready to go to a family with a few kids. The dog was coming out of a divorce and was seven years old. A seven year old German shepherd is a dog truly in his or her prime. A dog at 7 coming out of a family with kids is by far a well adjusted social animal, able to cope with chaos and be stable when the kids are throwing a fit or are out of control. Most sheps who have lived with families their entire life turn out to be excellent and loyal family members.
When I presented the dog to the family during a phone call, I was informed that they had just gotten a puppy dog from Petland the week before. They were hesitant to tell me even though I had made plans for them to get a dog from us. They will have a long road ahead or sure.
Pet stores throughout the USA get their dogs from mass breeding farms primarily in PA, MO, UT and in states where there are limited laws and no oversight into the cruel and harsh conditions that they are bred under. Many dogs never touch the ground and are bred and whelped in a crate in racks in warehouse conditions. Once ready to be distributed these dogs are put into trucks and dropped off like laundry to stores. The breeders rely on stores to worm them and do not consider their inbreeding or health to be very important factors in filling orders for dogs. The mother dogs of all breeds are frequently killed or dumped on the street when breeding years expire. This is especially true in the South and we see it here in dogs in the Miami are rural central FL areas.
The puppy that the family got somehow has a cool; set of ‘papers’ which are less useful than toilet tissue as the info is pure bull s..t. The new owner is assured of the championship qualities of their new puppy by a salesman whose experience with dogs involved cleaning up poop and washing kennels. The cost of $3500-$5000 also makes me sick, since a rescue pup is about $350-$700. The new owner of the puppy has to then get the dog its shots and of course a spay or neuter, where rescues get that done for them as part of the adoption fee. The pet store dog can be from a sire and bitch whose hips are bad, whose health is horrendous or who will have behavioral issues. Most are inbred leading to more severe health issues. These dogs can be predisposed to be what their breeding made them, which is more often than not a problem in hips, nervous systems, limbs and digestive systems. In this case the family had the puppy for 1 week and during that first week the dog had an ear infection and a stomach issue both requiring medical attention and both costing the owner another $400 in vet bills. When asked who is responsible, the pet store explained to them that since they didn’t buy the ‘dog health guaranty’ that they were responsible.
Dealing with these dirt bags is bad enough, but to add insult to injury is the norm in the puppy mill and pet store business. Supporting these pieces of crap forces inbreeding in all breeds of dogs and cats and diminishes the quality of the breed exponentially. These puppy mills turn out ‘designer breeds’ as well and because of their lack of knowledge and compassion for the animals frequently turn out litter after litter of dogs who are deformed and or are defective and then destroyed. I find the Chinese to be one of the lowest ethnic groups in their breeding domestic dogs for food, but the harm done to dogs of all breeds here in the USA by these puppy mills surely equals that repulsive level.
Some published facts about puppy mills in the USA are:
1. A puppy mill is a commercial dog-breeding facility that focuses on increasing profit with little overhead cost. The health and welfare of the animals is not a priority.
2. Female dogs are bred at every opportunity with little to no recovery time between litters. When, after a few years, they are physically depleted to the point that they no longer can reproduce, breeding females are often killed.
3. Every year in America, it's estimated that 2.11 million puppies are sold that originated from puppy mills, while 3 million are killed in shelters because they are too full and there aren’t enough adoptive homes. Act as a publicist for your local animal shelter to encourage your community to adopt shelter pets.
4. In puppy mills, dogs can spend most of their lives in cramped cages, with no room to play or exercise.
5. Often times, the water and food provided for the puppies is contaminated, crawling with bugs. Puppies can even be malnourished and therefore do not grow normally.
6. Puppies in mills are found with bleeding or swollen paws, feet falling through the wire cages, severe tooth decay in smaller breeds, ear infections, dehydration, and lesions on their eyes, which often lead to blindness.
7. In most states, puppy mills are legal albeit that many states have outlawed pet stores as a means to distribute these animals to the public. It is important that future pet owners seek rescue dogs from their local shelter or buy pets from a trusted professional breeder in order to put mills out of business. No reputable breeder would ever sell a puppy through a pet store hence all of the BS paperwork you get from these stores is truly a fabrication.
8. It is estimated that there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. Fewer than 3,000 of these are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
9. Most puppy mills have no veterinary care, climate control, or protection for the animals from weather (hot, cold, rain, or snow).
10. With limited or no regulations or enforcement, puppy mills have no cleanup control. This means that dogs can be living in urine and feces for indefinite periods of time.
11. It's common to find dogs in puppy mills with collars that have been fastened so tightly that they have become embedded in a dog’s neck and must be carefully cut out.
12. There are approximately 10,000 puppy mills in the US.
13. Almost all puppies sold in stores come from puppy mills.
14. Over a million puppies were produced yearly by licensed facilities in the US.
15. 30 people were infected with Campylobacter jejuni; the disease was contracted by puppies in a pet store.
16. California was the very first state to ban retail pet sales, puppy mill statistics from 2017 reveal.
17. There are about 167,388 breeding dogs in facilities licensed by the USDA.
18. Each female dog gives birth to 9.4 puppies on average every year.
19. Missouri has the most (so-called) problem puppy mills for 7 years straight.
20. Dog brokers pay anywhere between $50 and $150 per puppy from puppy mills and sell them for $2000 to $7500 each.
21. A staggering 2.4 million puppies produced by licensed and unlicensed puppy mills are sold each year.
General Puppy Mill Statistics
Many people don’t realize that mass breeders produce nearly all of the animals in pet stores, not just puppies. Usually, these animals are bred as livestock in deplorable conditions. They lack veterinary attention, socialization, and the puppies produced in such circumstances quite often have either chronic illnesses or die shortly after being purchased from the pet store. The more aware people are of where puppies in pet stores actually come from, the better.