Puppy Mills - Factory Farms for Man's Best Friend
Puppy mills typically are large-scale dog breeding facilities that mass-produce purebred and mixed-breed puppies for resale to brokers who, in turn, sell directly to pet shops, and where emphasis on financial profit is placed above the dogs' health and well-being.
They are also referred to as puppy farms or canine factory farms, places where intensive confinement is the norm.
Puppy mills can also be licensed facilities/kennels that sell directly to the public, and can house as few as a dozen dogs or exceed 1,000. Even so-called reputable or AKC hobby and show 'fanciers' can and do operate puppy mills.
The majority of puppy mills are located in the Midwest, but several hundred are also found in PA's Lancaster County, where Amish & Mennonite breeders flourish in “the puppy mill capital of the East." Thousands of Amish and Mennonite-owned puppy mills are found in Ohio and Wisconsin and New York's Finger Lakes Region.
Holmes County, Ohio, population 39,000, now leads the pack with almost 500 kennels, and most of these are Amish-owned. For more information on Ohio's puppy mills, click here.
In a typical puppy mill, hundreds - even thousands - of adult dogs (the “breeding stock”) are bred continuously. These dogs live miserable
lives in crude, tiny, mostly outdoor structures. The “breeding stock” never gets out of their wire cages; they never touch the ground or run in the grass; they are never free, safe, loved or treated like companion animals. They are often inbred, resulting in a myriad of genetic defects which are inherited in the puppies.
Puppies are taken from the mothers between 5-6 weeks, before their immune systems are strong enough to withstand transport. As a result, many puppies have contagious viruses, infections, congenital defects, parasites, and other health conditions. In addition, these puppies tend to exhibit a host of emotional and behavioral problems resulting from the poor health of the breeding stock, the poor conditions, the stress of transport, and the lack of maternal and sibling bonding in the first weeks of life.
High prices and American Kennel Club (AKC) registration papers DO NOT guarantee a quality, healthy puppy. Don't be misled by pet shop employees who claim their dogs come from "good breeders" or that their puppies are "hand picked by the owner."
Recommended Reading
Saving Gracie, How one dog escaped the shadowy world of American puppy mills, by Carol Bradley, 2010 (now in paperback)
Puppy Mill Dogs Speak! By Christine Palm Shaughness with Chris Slawecki, 2011
Dog Blessed, Puppy Mill Survivor Stories, by Lisa Fischer, 2010
The Puppy Report, How Reckless Breeding Threatens to Ruin Purebred Dogs, by Larry Shook, 1992
The Dog Crisis, by Iris Nowell, 1978
The Pet Profiteers, The Exploitation of Pet Owners and Pets in America, by Lee Edwards Benning, 1976
Puppy mills are often called factory farms for dogs because of the intensive confinement of the so-called breeding stock and their offspring, the puppies produced for pet shops.