Tags
animal cruelty, animal welfare, breeders, commercial breeders, english bulldogs, iowa, iowa voters for companion animals, madonna of the mills, pet stores, puppies, puppy mills, shiba inu, usda
Now that HBO has premiered Madonna of the Mills, we’re a step closer to leading everyone (or at least a segment of the TV-viewing population) to understand that pet store puppies come from horrid, festering, disgusting, putrid kennels. But what about the breeders that pet owners have so carefully “researched” online to make sure that they’re not dealing with the worst of the worst? What about the puppies that come from family farms located in the peaceful cornfields of the American Midwest? Surely nothing that horrendous could come from such idyllic locales. After all, these breeders send digital pictures and videos to “prove” that their puppies have been socialized with children, come from a clean home, and most important of all, are cute. Besides, why would the USDA be willing to license and inspect so many breeders if they were all puppy mills? Aren’t laws helpful, and doesn’t regulation and control ensure quality standards?
When we divert the “puppy mill problem” to the Amish or the Mennonites or pet stores or a few notorious states or poo-mixes, it’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking that the problem doesn’t concern us. But this corrupt, ineffective, and broken system continues because we’re still not paying close enough attention and we’re excusing our rash purchases with our love — our love for the one puppy we couldn’t resist, our personal claims on a breed, our unwillingness to admit the frailties of our own, precious egos.
Meanwhile, some breeds should urge us to a heightened degree of sensitivity. While virtually no breed is invulnerable to puppy mills of the past and present, I’m writing today’s doozy of an entry from a personal perspective of concern for what I’ve observed with the Shiba Inu. Despite their devilish reputation, Shibas are just too cute for their own good. As relatively recent AKC-approved breed that is steadily increasing in popularity, Shibas have fallen victim to commercial breeders at a rapid slide. They’re compact in size and easy to market, which makes them coveted “stock” with puppy mills. And there’s no way to even begin cleaning things up unless we can somehow peel back and demystify the layers of the problem.
Those of us who live in our happy hoo-hah urban centers or certain regions of the United States/the world may never have seen a puppy mill except on television or in images that tend to tout the worst. I also grant that USDA licensing means different things in different areas. My current state of residence, for example, is not a known puppy mill state. As befits our "high tech" reputation, however, California does seem to specialize in breeding facilities for non-human primates that are sold for laboratory research use. Florida, as another point of comparison, is prime breeding ground for exotics such as sugar gliders, reptiles, pet marmosets, and others. USDA licenses are even granted to a few legitimate conservatories for rare and wild species.
When we're talking about the American heartland, USDA licensed breeders are more often dealing in puppies. Lots of them at a time.
Since I had some time to kill on my multi-day drive across the country, since I had the freedom to choose a meandering route, and since I was curious and wanted to understand how an environment could give rise to and foster something that I find so deeply problematic, I took several hours out of my way to embark on a Midwest Puppy Mill [de]tour. Armed simply with directions from Google Maps, published lists of Class A and Class B certification holders, and my own accumulated knowledge of where Shibas are coming from, I embarked on a mission to see, smell, hear, and to witness for myself what counts as a USDA certified facility.
Sounds like a delightful way to spend one’s vacation, huh?
This whole thing was thrown together at the last minute, with little planning, so I didn’t get very in-depth. But with a long enough drive, even a superficial experience will unravel into several thousand words.
I got this idea when I first hit Iowa, a state I associate with a fairly active group of lobbyists and advocates to counter the high volume of puppy mills. There are quite a few Shiba Inu breeders in the state. Several are registered with the USDA. I selected one address in Lee County that I know deals in Shibas, and drove south off I-80.
A little over an hour later, I found myself on a state highway at my target destination. Drive just a smidge faster than the posted speed limits, and you’ll blow through the town within minutes. With an official population of 130, 100% white, suffice to say that I stood out as an obvious outsider. It was also easy to find the USDA Class A breeder that I was looking for, as Damming Farms* is conveniently located right across from the sign announcing the town limits.
It looks like a beautiful home, located in the midst of flourishing corn and soy crops. The building that the Damming’s website describes as “the puppy house” is located in a separate, stand-alone structure. Curiously, and not mentioned on their website, there was another identically-designed structure right behind that, leading me to wonder if there was not just one puppy house, but two, indicating the volume at which this breeder produces puppies.
However, this was not at all the image of a “puppy mill” that I had in mind. And furthermore, it was eerily silent, for what I thought it was. Perhaps this was owing to the time of day, as the outdoors temperature was somewhere in the drowsy 80’s. At any rate, aside from the goosebumps of being gawked at when I stopped at the town gas station for a cup of coffee, it was turning out to be a pretty dull adventure so far, so I decided to find someplace to contemplate my next move.
I drove to a nearby baseball field, where I parked my car and pulled out my lunch. I savored the quiet, and tried to imagine the advantages of growing up in this landscape. At some point during my contemplation, someone returned to the Damming farm, raising up a significant frenzy of yapping dogs — most of them quite small, from the sounds of it. There were too many for me to distinguish just how many were barking at once, and since I was situated at a distance, the sounds were not as clear as they could have been. But that piercing, shrilling, almost frantic pack of unseen dogs left an impression on me, an audio confirmation of what I knew was in those buildings.
The least I can say is that the dogs don’t bark continuously. Their neighbors would not stand for it, I think. Their neighbors also surely consider them fine folks, because the Dammings are a prominent local family, probably with deep investments and long roots in this tiny community. They have a damn street in town named after them, after all. Protected by this veneer of being upstanding, down-home citizens, they’ll never be called out for what they do. Nobody in their community would ever think to condemn what they do as exploitative. They’ve just been handsomely successful at making a living and providing for their families.
On the backs of a couple dozen dogs.
I’d seen and heard enough. I got in my car and continued driving West, quietly digesting what I had just seen.
It wasn’t until I got home that I finally looked up how many dogs they had. My guess of a couple dozen dogs and puppies was low, by manifold. There were actually 90 adult dogs and 40 puppies there, according to a USDA inspection report dated October 4, 2010. Apparently, you can cram a lot of dogs into a relatively limited area if the dogs are small to begin with, and if they’re not given any excess space.
Now, had I traveled the other way down the highway, I would have run into a neighboring town that is the site of a USDA Class B breeder whom I’ll call Lithopolis.* Earlier this year, Lithopolis housed more dogs than the population of the entire town. I kid you not. 1200 adult dogs and puppies according to a May 2011 inspection report, whereas the town’s listed population doesn’t even crack four digits.
But something happened between May and July, when another inspection was conducted. Within two months time, Lithopolis had gotten rid of nearly a thousand dogs, “downsizing” to a “mere” 228 adult dogs on his premises. When a puppy miller moves that many dogs at once, I get nervous… especially when I fear that they may be considering a strategic departure from the bully breeds they were familiar with, and creeping towards a growing interest in our beloved Shiba Inu.
By coincidence or by design, a Damming Farm co-breeder lives in the same town as Lithopolis. She doesn’t have a separate USDA registration on file, since she handles only the Shiba Inu for the family business. Given that her two females are pregnant for the second time this year, I wonder if she ever manages her “extra” puppies by passing them along to her neighboring USDA Class B breeder, since he professes an interest in the breed and, unlike Class A breeders, is licensed to broker sales of puppies that he didn’t produce himself.
Since I did not see Lithopolis for myself, I can only imagine what the facilities were like. But further down West on the highway, I found another kennel that hinted at the degree of sanitary horrors I might have witnessed.
This is a Google Street View image of what I later confirmed as Randolph Farms.* I was able to match the name against the USDA lists, because they spell out the family name in stones on their front lawn. As this is an old shot from several years ago, some changes to the landscape are not represented. For one thing, the double-tiered kennel on the right exhibits some weathering. The saplings planted in front of the kennel had also grown just a little bigger to provide minimal shade and heat protection, though they do nothing to obscure the building from roadside traffic.
Like Lithopolis, Randolph Farms specializes in English Bulldogs. They also have a litter of Siberian huskies posted on Nextdaypets.com at the moment. Neither are breeds that seemed particularly well suited to life in this manner.
These kennels with a sheltered interior and a portal leading to an exposed cage are quaintly referred to in the industry as “Sundowner” type buildings (named after the original manufacturers), as if the dogs could strut onto an outdoor balcony and admire a view of golden sunset dripping over their vast, prairie home. The wire flooring is known as “Tenderfoot” flooring, as if the dogs are dancing ballerinas taking a graceful shit over heat-baked metal mesh. What these euphemistic terms mask, and what the pictures don’t divulge is how badly these kennels reek, even when someone is just casually driving by with the car windows rolled down.
Now, I don’t necessarily know how to distinguish all my farm scents, but I doubt the olfactory assault came from any nearby, invisible cows or horses or pigs. I have done some time mopping up a building that housed a large number of dogs, and while this odor didn’t exactly match, it was much closer to that memory than any manure. If just one of these Sundowners smells this bad, I can’t imagine how polluted the air would be with a dozen or more on the property.
Inspection reports suggest that my senses probably were not mistaken. They had been recently cited for “excessive accumulation of feces” and penning their dogs in cages that were smaller than required — which is saying quite a bit, since the USDA only requires 6 inches of additional space above the top of the animal’s head.
What struck me about this farm’s layout was its shamelessness, their willingness to put their “wares” out on roadside display, so to speak. The Randolphs don’t see what they’re doing as wrong. They’re proud to call this farm their own, stinky Sundowner and all. This mentality is what I was striving to understand as I continued through more back roads on into Nebraska. Must I have known nothing other than small town agricultural life in order to understand? Do I need a brood of human children to provide for before I can grasp the simple economics, let alone psychology, of this choice to breed and broker dogs for a living? A farmer’s gotta steel himself for the slaughter if he wants bacon for breakfast, but what kind of mental numbing must you force upon yourself to deny a species whose natural inclination is to be with humans?
Numerous USDA breeder websites insist on the “joy” and the “pleasure” of having pets as their business. They drip with honeyed, vague testimonies about how well their “furbabies” are taken care of. But USDA regulations don’t promote ethical breeding practices, let alone responsible pet care; they basically provide for the minimum biological functions for penned livestock, and that’s it. There’s little incentive and not enough resources for puppy farmers to do more than the required minimum when they’re dealing with dozens, if not hundreds of breeding dogs at once.
The numbers alone signify such a completely different world, an entirely foreign mentality than what I know, though this mindset pervades all across the country. I know it’s not just an Iowa problem, or a Missouri problem, or a Lancaster County problem, or [insert place]. You could put a farm like this in the next county over and I’d still be aghast that the farmer and I are both human. Yet sometimes, because of where I live, it’s easy to bask in the self-assured conviction that we don’t have that kind of ugliness around here, knowing my community would quickly mobilize to purge anything like a puppy mill if it were right in our midst. But the truth is, those who’ve seeded the continued existence of puppy mills move amongst us all the time. Take this excerpt from Hearts and Sparkles* Kennels:
We started raising puppies over 15 years ago, with the help of our 3 children. Now, that our children are grown and on their own, they have started raising puppies, as well.
At first we sold our puppies to pet stores (mainly on the east & west coasts) and privately to people in our area. Lately, however, we have received many inquires from people who have purchased our puppies from those pet stores, wondering if they and their friends could buy puppies directly from us. The answer is obviously “YES!” and so here we are on the World Wide Web.
In these fifteen years, the internet has drastically changed the rules of engagement. Had the puppies stayed within these quiet little agricultural communities, perhaps my outrage, as an outsider, would be misplaced. But because the coasts and the Midwest are bridged by this traffic in puppies, and because they are just as complicit as we are (enthusiastically so!), I can’t say I feel any remorse about letting my city slicker coastal values hitchhike along with the dollars.
Or rather, my values tell me that I do not want my dollars to go to puppy producers whose standards fall so, so far short of my own. It’s just not worth it.
On one hand, the internet makes it easier to publicize the evils behind pet store pups and for dog lovers to network and confront the more public, commercial faces of the problem. On the other hand, the internet has also empowered individuals with the satisfaction of claiming ourselves as authorities, patting ourselves on the back for all the online “research” we’ve done on our chosen breed. You can’t boycott an individual, much less monitor the private desires of those who have invested months or years of their own precious time into making their dreams a living, wriggling, purchasable reality.
But you can attempt to reach out, and educate. Teach each other how to do some honest research, and also how research is an ongoing process. The one phrase that most often flusters me is “But I’ve done my research,” especially when it’s lobbied as a defense of one’s poor decisions (these are also my cranky graduate student instructor horns sprouting). Research is never “done” or completed. Now, I don’t even have the luxury of allowing myself that excuse when it came to how we acquired Bowdu, and I often feel like I’ll need to spend a lifetime atoning for my and others’ ignorance.
Yet, the beautiful thing is that once you know, you can’t really turn back. It takes a lot of effort or trauma to unknow something.
I’d rather take my knowledge along in search of more hopeful horizons.
This was a more personal account of a topic that I’ll write more about later. In the next part, I’ll provide a better organized list of resources on how one can use the internet to research a breeder they’re considering (some resources are already embedded above, though there are definitely a few others).
Meanwhile, if you have HBO (which we don’t at the House of Two Bows, let alone a television), you can catch Madonna of the Mills again this Sunday, and several times afterward. Please check the official website for the schedule.
* Names changed not to protect the innocent, but because I can’t stand to give advertising to the puppy mills that I would rather see go out of business. The diligent or curious should have no trouble looking up any of my references. Or you can just ask.
Dave said:
Heh. I don’t think naming names will be advertising businesses; especially with the tone of this post. I means… the stuff Chris from Border Wars dug up on collie breeders had the CCA scrambling and screaming at each others.
Whether or not the millers would actually file a libel lawsuit, and if they have the ability to lawyer up, is another issue altogether.
M.C. said:
I don’t have the patience to sort through the laws and figure out where my rights are protected in any potential libel lawsuit. Nor do I have the energy or sense of humor to appropriately shame those who would come to these puppy millers’ defense, as Border Wars obviously does. Mostly, these people just make me sad and angry, which are exhausting enough feelings as it is.
But you’re not the only one that thinks I should name names. I’m still considering the advantages of dropping the veil… though it’s an awfully thin one, you know.
Dave said:
Yes, Chris is fortunate the people he called don’t view their practice as business. It’s kind of hard to win a libel lawsuit when one can’t demonstrate they have an income.
Now, with puppy-millers, it’s a bit difference. Hobbyists can’t even dream coming close to their caibre. It’s outside of anyone’s ability.
Jess said:
It is exceptionally difficult to win libel suits in the US, anyways, because the burden is on the libeled to prove that the statement is not true. That is why celebrities always file their libel suits against tabloids in the UK, where the opposite is true.
The vagueness of the term ‘puppy mill’ and it’s general usage in the fancy does not help. I have it on good authority that I am a puppy mill, and there are many breeders out there that will indeed tell that yes, Jess is a puppy mill, if you ask them.
There was a Canadian case where a commercial breeder sued an individual for calling them a puppy mill on online review sites and won.
M.C. said:
You handle far more dogs and puppies than I could ever handle at once, but I don’t find there’s much that’s vague about you, heh. You know all your dogs not just by name, but by personality, they don’t appear to be living in cages, hell, they even get to come inside the house, and your words express how much you care about your dogs in very convincing terms. Of course, part of my point is that it’s very easy to put on a show or flat-out lie over the internet, so you really can’t believe every digital thing you see. But you? I’m not worried.
And I don’t see your name on any lists of USDA certified breeders. While I’ve found a few interesting examples of what people do with USDA registrations (Tigerhomes.org, wild-side.org to name a couple), I’m pretty confident in saying USDA dog breeder=puppy mill with, say, a 0.2% margin of error. For a breed like the Shiba, I don’t think it pays to hem and haw over this issue.
This Canadian case sounds interesting. If you have a reference or case name, I’d be interested in looking it up.
M.C. said:
N/M, I found the case, though I’ve yet to find a good account that just strips everything down to the facts. Paws R Us vs. Lorie Gordon. Court ruled in favor of Paws R Us in 2009. Apparently Gordon had an appeal date set for May 2011? Have not found an update.
Sounds like she was sued not for libel, but defamation — if they’re even different legal terms? Libel is the means, defamation is the result? Hmm.
(Aurgh, I’m doing exactly what I did not want to be doing, sorting through the laws on calling breeders out by name, but something else made me return to this.)
Jess said:
I have a pdf of the decision, if you want it. E-mail brettbooth at gmail.com
I am not USDA licensed, no. The only reason for a dog breeder to be USDA licensed is to sell at wholesale, it’s required by federal law if you have three or more bitches and want to sell wholesale. I would not sell any puppy wholesale.
I am not aware of any state license that also requires a USDA license, though there are states that use the AWA rules for their licensing. That’s actually a problem, because those regs are based on engineering standards, and applying them to dogs that live in a home, and puppies that are whelped in the home, is near impossible.
Adam Lang said:
Actually, you’d be surprised. Every time you quote the name of a business, that business gets more prominent in Google listings.
There are a few companies that intentionally dick around unsatisfied customers, getting them more and more infuriated, so that they will post more and more scathing reviews, so that the company will get higher and higher in the Google ratings when someone searches for their particular product or subject matter… because hey, people are talking about them, right?
taro the shiba (& pack) said:
thanks for wading in deep and heavy here. my pack is really looking forward to seeing what comes in the next post.
Adam Lang said:
Ugh. I knew I’d have to put my fingers in my ears and sing ‘la la la la!’ to myself while reading this.
The one thing I find hopeful is that, of the dogs I find to photograph in San Francisco, the VAST majority are rescue dogs. It’s not even close. In fact, if I hear “Oh yes, he’s a purebred Ibizan hound,” I’m more likely to hear “…or so the shelter told me” than I am to hear “We have his papers at home.”
This may just be another place where San Francisco looks a lot different than the rest of the country. But I roam some of the richest areas of San Francisco (Pacific Heights, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill). If I were a betting man, that’s where I would have bet you would have found fewer rescue dogs, and more purebred show-quality animals. That I don’t gives me a bit of hope.
M.C. said:
The dogs you photograph are beautiful and charming, no matter what their origins. No, I can’t be constantly thinking about how many of them MIGHT be puppy mill dogs, because that would quickly make me a bitter old witch. I don’t usually ask where people got their dogs… Sometimes I will with Basenjis, because there aren’t actually that many breeders and breed rescue is fairly cohesive and organized. But I think you’re right that folks and especially dog lovers around here tend to be rather civic-minded (even if they can be just as crazy and loopy as anywhere in the rest of the world). And all the rescue groups I know around here are very active, very visible, constantly engaging with the public, so it makes a lot of sense to me that the rescues ARE circulating, even amongst the purebred populations.
I do think we have it pretty good here, dogs included! And it does give me hope!
Jessica Stephens (@munky15) said:
Unfortunately, my rescued shiba comes from one of those mills (I think). The people from the “Damming Farm” sure do seem to “own” that town. There are multiple breeders in the area with that last name, so I’m not sure if she’s from that one or one of the many relatives of the “Dammings.” It’s disgusting how involved all these people are in this horrible con.
My shiba’s father is in fact from the “Lithopolis” mill. I can’t imagine how that man believes (or that other people are supposed to believe) that he can properly care for 1200 dogs, or even 228, for that matter. I don’t think I even want to know what he did with those 1000 dogs.
I do what I can to let people know that buying from pet stores is only supporting this horrible cause. I have hope for the future that one day all of this can finally come to an end.
M.C. said:
I’m glad you were able to recognize some of the breeders, even with my flimsy attempt at coverup. I’m sorry that your shiba had to come to you the way he (?) did, but I’m also grateful to hear that he had a loving place to go!
I don’t know yet what it’ll take for all this to “end,” but I’d like to think that I’ll see wide-sweeping reform in my lifetime. No more generations of puppy farmers continuing the family business, please… there’s got to be a better way.
Nicole Compliment said:
Very nice Blog post. Puppy mills are everywhere even in Indiana..
I always go by chicken farmers or maybe they’re pig farmers hard to tell since both like to keep their animals hidden away in closed buildings and both stink to high heaven.. coarse that’s another subject all together..
There’s a lot wrong going on in this country and industry farming and puppymills are two of them..
I sadly don’t have HBO, but from what they told me they plan to release it on dvd so I’ll get that. I’ll lend the DVD to people who say they plan to buy a dog from a pet store..
PupChow said:
Major thumbs-up for actually going to the mills and scouting them out in person at the risk of being chased out of town with pitchforks & torches!
I am trying to understand the mentality behind puppy mills. Legally, I assume the farmers (and obviously USDA) treat the dogs as livestocks so mills can get by with bare minimum living standard. Is there a convincing way to distinguish dogs from other livestocks?
I really wish we can actually hear the puppy mills’ side of the story. Perhaps it was covered in Madonna of the Mills. [Un]fortunately, like the House of Two Bows, I also do not watch TV nor own a TV at home… I will be waiting for the release for online streaming!
Lisa K said:
Please contact me…I loved your blog and have been taking similar tours throughout Iowa, where I reside.
Gerry said:
Aren’t two of those bulldogs in the picture the same?
Nicole Compliment said:
Your right Gerry the two bulldogs do have same markings.. Guess they didn’t have other nice looking ones so they used same picture.. hehe
Adam Lang said:
Here, you might be interested in this:
http://www.shannonjohnstone.com/portfolios/breeding_Ignorance/breeding_ignorance_preface_page.html
I would post it on my blog, but I refuse to post anything on my blog that I can’t stand to look at myself…
shibamistress said:
Thanks for this post, which is very powerful, and outlines some of the magnitude of the problem. The numbers really speak for themselves–the sheer amount of dogs some of these places have. I really was impressed that you went and saw some of these places (esp. “damming” farms) and also the links that you included, about how the dogs are kept, were very powerful. And damning, to anyone who cares about animals, though of course not damning to the USDA which finds this kind of thing acceptable.
I’m not really interested in the “other side” of the story, to be honest. i don’t care why people start puppy mills or what their justifications are. It’s cruel, and I want to see it stopped. I have no illusions that there is much I can do to stop them, so I try to do what this blog does so eloquently: I try to educate. I try to reign in some of my (righteous) anger, so there is room for education, though sometimes it’s pretty hard to do that, especially when some puppy buyers often refuse to be educated and refuse to see that their buying from these places supports this cruelty. And some days it’s hard not to just feel utter despair for Shibas, who are unfortunate enough to be smallish and cute, and thus a target for this kind of thing. Though of course I despair for any dog existing like this.
Anyway, really powerful post. Thank you. I plan to link it to my blog, too.
peopleforanimals2011 said:
Thank you for posting this! I, myself, am from Iowa and you would be ASTONISHED at how uneducated people are when it comes to puppy mills. They are seriously everywhere and almost everyone is bragging about how much money they spent on the dog they just purchased. I am trying my hardest to educate the citizens how the dangers of buying dogs. Not only are the mama/papa dogs being tortured, but the puppies often have long term health conditiona because the dogs aren’t being screened for genetic defects. I put a post on my page about a specific mill that I am against, and they happen to be supplying puppies to a store right here in our town. I also neglected to put the name, because I didn’t feel like giving them that extra bit of advertisement. But I did put the pet store’s name as my title, just so anyone who searches for them will run across my blog– AND IT WORKED! I see it all of the time and have actually been contacted just to say thanks for detering the purchase. Please, please keep being a voice for the voiceless! And know that there are a few of us here in Iowa that are trying equally as hard!
Pingback: A hypothetical puppy search in seven steps: internet tools to evaluate a breeder « The House of Two Bows 雙寶之屋
Helen P. (Whiskered Paintings) said:
I just found this post through your “About” section. Interestingly, yesterday, I randomly stumbled onto some of your comments about another shiba puppy mill on the shiba inu forums. (I shall not mention names if that is your preference.)
There is a shiba breeder in my area who has a full waiting list, with puppies available once or twice a year. This seems legitimate to me. Basically, I think that if puppies are available all the time and the breeder has a nice website, I’m looking at a puppy mill.
lyra said:
I live in Lee County. I adopted a puppy mill puppy. I am now spreading the word about puppy mills in our County. I am furious and disgusted!!!! Thank you for your article, your references and intelligence are refreshing.
Beamer said:
Awesome blog! I’ve been reading it for the past few days. I don’t know if you looked on D* Farms’ website lately, but it seems like they have equipped their dogs with bark collars. Maybe that’s why they’re not constantly barking. This just adds to the fact that puppy mills and “breeders” are absolutely despicable!
M.C. said:
Hi there — thanks for checking us out. I haven’t kept up with their sales lately (considering their volume and all…). I know their Shibas have always been depicted with shock collars though. The story is that the collars are for their invisible fence, which gives the impression that they actually get to spend time out running free in the yard, etc. I’m not so sure about that… and they’re still shock collars, after all.
For a breed that’s as driven as the Shiba, invisible fences are considered a poor option for containment, anyway.
I find puppy mill practices to be inherently horrible, no matter how clean, high-tech, or “family run” the operation. This post was originally born out of my frustration with how it’s not always so obvious what is or is not a puppy mill. But even when it IS apparent, sometimes pet owners get very defensive because the breeders were “nice,” or they are depicted as part of a big, smiling family, or their puppy was clean and healthy on arrival, and so none of it fits one’s mental image of what a “despicable” puppy mill should be. My point here is that it’s not always so absolute, and we have to learn to be more critical all around in order to find the good breeders who actually DO reflect our personal standards and values.
Beamer said:
We have 3 dogs. Our pug was purchased from a pug breeder, we trust them because their pugs are show dogs and when we picked up our pug, all the puppies were in the kitchen playing. They also asked if they could use our pug as a stud in the future, so I’m assuming they don’t like keeping too many dogs on their property. Our shepherd/lab mix was adopted from the local humane society and he was seized from a puppy mill in Quebec. He and his litter mates all had coccidia, but other than that, he was fine. I guess the humane society nursed all the puppies back to health before deeming them adoptable. Our miniature schnauzer was purchased by my impulsive sister who didn’t do her research. His contract was a fill in the blank (we certify that this ________ is free of any genetic disorders, etc), so it was obvious that the breeders bred other kinds of puppies. The people who sold the miniature schnauzer to my sister didn’t have his parents on site. They claimed that they help “farmers” sell their puppies because they live far up north and want to sell their puppies in the down-town core. He also had parvo and it didn’t reveal itself until a few days after she brought him home. They were nice enough to nurse him back to health, but I think we will be adopting all our dogs from now on. Rescues are very transparent about the animals they put up for adoption and just want the best for their animals.
Pingback: Toby’s State of the Shiba Address « From the House of the Fox Dogs