Puppy mills. Hearing that term should make a person furious. Puppy mills are dog breeding operations where profit is placed above animal welfare. Puppy mills represent a serious concern, not only for the dogs, but for future generations as well. The United States government must eliminate puppy mills by having mill owners be incarcerated instead of just fined, allowing more searches of certified breeders, and have congress pass a nationwide law.
Background Information
Within the background of the American dog breeding society lies a dark secret. With over 4,000 in number, puppy mills are inhumane, brutal, and selfish operations where profits are placed above dogs health (ASPCA). The conditions in the mills are comparable to how cattle is kept by the meat packing industry, only with this some dogs must suffer their entire lives compared to the mere months in slaughterhouses (Bradley). The food is rancid, the water dirty, and the cages are cramped. The cages are stacked one upon the other, leaving cuts on the dogs paws. The dogs have open wounds, bones showing, and decayed teeth. It has been scientifically proven that animals like dogs and cattle feel pain, so one can imagine the unbelievable torment these innocent dogs must endure (Currie-McGhee, 19) Why do puppy mills even exist? Well, the answer to that lies within the American people. Every year, thousands of dogs are adopted by dog/pet stores. Petco and Petsmart are examples of these stores. They get their puppies from puppy mills. If said companies have a reliable source of dogs, they are not going to be inclined to stop purchasing the dogs (PETA).
If someone is a dog buyer and they think this won’t affect them, they are wrong. The simple fact is that dogs ...
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http://www.peta.org/issues/companion-animal-issues/companion-animals-factsheets/puppy-mills-dogs-abused-pet-trade/
http://www.aspca.org/fight-cruelty/puppy-mills/puppy-mill-faq
Works Cited
Arluke, Arnold. Just a Dog: Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2006. Print.
Bradley, Carol. Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010. Print.
"Puppy Mill FAQ." ASPCA. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. .
"Puppy Mills: Dogs Abused for the Pet Trade." PETA. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. .
Woodward, Kay. Animal Rights. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library, 2005. Print.
A puppy mill is a horrible place that breeds dogs. Dogs that are breedable may get little to no recovery time between pregnancies. Dogs and puppies are stuffed into wire cages that can harm them. Puppy mills tend to be overcrowded disease and virus filled places. Puppy mills focus on profit rather than the health of the dogs. Many dogs are bred with little regard of genetic quality. Dogs in puppy mills are deprived of veterinary care, food, water, and socialization. If a dog is older and unable to breed anymore they are likely to be killed. Some dogs may never see the light of day or get any attention.
Hundreds of thousands of puppies are raised each year in commercial kennels (Puppymills Breed Misery). Puppy mills keep breed stock in horrible conditions for their short lives and produce unhealthy puppies with many issues. Not only are they committing “inhumane care,” but puppy mills are responsible for customer fraud. Many puppy mills are small and contain about twenty breeding dogs in basements, garages, or sheds “in cages stacked to the roof.” The dogs will stay in those cages without “exercise or sunlight.” Also, the dogs have two “litters” a year till about the age five. Other puppy mills contain hundreds of breeding dogs. The operators keep the puppies in “relative darkness” so the puppies seldom cry or draw attention. The dogs in puppy mills rarely receive medical attention. The females are dissipated because of the never-ending period of “producing and nursing litters.” Most dogs have “chronic ailments, rotten teeth, and ear, eye, and skin infections.” Many of the puppies purchased from puppy mills are un-healthy and not well-adjusted. The puppies have a high prevalence of hereditary syndromes and illnesses, and difficulties that occurs following the “purchase.” After the females cannot produce anymore liters...
Call to Action: Challenge your audience to be a responsible pet consumer and not purchase dogs from pet stores or from the Internet. I encourage you to instead, adopt from their local animal shelter. At an animal shelter, you can find many amazing, healthy animals. If you do buy from a breeder, use extreme caution and ask to see the puppy’s parents. Also, please contact your congressional representative and encourage him or her to help pass the PUPS bill.
There are about ten thousand puppy mills nationwide. (ISAR) There may be even more puppy mills than we know because they are unlicensed and do it in their own homes. These thousands of puppy mills are taking advantage of the breeding abilities of female dogs. There are over two million puppies bred in these mills per year. (PMP) That is more puppies than the entire population of Houston, Texas! The worst part about this is that one 1.2 million dogs are euthanized in shelters every year because no one will adopt them. (PMP) I, along with thousands of other people, believe that it is completely ridiculous that puppies are being killed because of unpleasant human beings. They deserve to have a full life and not be put to sleep because there is not enough good people in this world to take care of them and give them the life that they deserve. If you decide to purchase a puppy from a pet store, it keeps the cycle strong by encouraging more breeding, which leads to even more killing of the canine’s. (ISAR) However, if you adopt a dog from a rescue facility, it saves the puppies lives. If we stop the breeders from breeding more dogs, this would settle down and nearly all the dogs in the world will have a home. But to fix this problem, we need to get attention towards the breeders and have them
According to a recent study by the University of Pennsylvania Medicine, it has been proven dogs bred in puppy mills are unable to demonstrate impaired health. Animals from puppy mills show uncontrollable abnormal behavioral characteristics that causes fear easily. (Hawaiian Humane Society) Animals in puppy mills are not bred for the quality of the animal created but for the quantity of it. Many of the animals not only gain defects but can also be handed the defect from generation to generation. (PETA) In many of the puppy mills, animals are placed in small cages with very little room to move around because there is multiple dogs with them. There has been cases where a dog has been injured from a fight bec...
Many people throughout the years have really under estimated the effect of what dog fighting really has and how it is considered abuse on dogs and even dog breeds in general. How it has a society knowing the true facts of the people and what really goes on behind the clos doors of dog fighting. It can cause abuse, drugs, gangs, and even death. What people are involved and how articles can really open a person’s view on what really goes on out there and what people are doing to fight back dog fighting. What one person or thousand can do to save dogs from being put into the ring.
Pets have been a part of the American life for forever. It comes to no surprise that the most popular pet in the United States is the dog. There are over 68 million dogs owned with a range of 130 dog breeds. Over the past ten years, it has become clear that the rate of dog bites has steadily been rising. There are over 4.7 million reported cases of dog bites each year in the United States alone. State officials have been hounding the dog world for years over this issue. Instead of blaming certain dog breeds for violence, people should instead be looking at the owners themselves (Pet-Owner Liability).
Countless lives locked away in cages and forgotten about have overwhelmed our society, it has left blood stains on our history as a species and if history has taught us anything, it’s that we have a choice to change our ways of adjusting to situations. A war which was fought in pursuit of ending such criminal means, yet we as human beings do little to nothing to end the horrific crimes of animal deaths in shelters. It is no secret that this world has become infused with problems that have extended from one side of the globe to the other. Amongst these problems lies a terrible truth: nearly every year, sums of almost eight million cats and dogs have been placed in shelters around the world. Out of these vast numbers, half will be euthanized; that equals to one animal being put down every 8 seconds. Animals that are not adopted are kept in shelters until they find a home. Most of these shelters do not have enough space or resources to care for the animal. Only 15% of dogs and 2% of cats that enter animal shelters are reunited with their owners. The majority of pets are obtained from acquaintances and family members. Twenty-six percent of dogs are purchased from breeders, 20 to 30 percent of cats and dogs are adopted from shelters and rescues, and 2 to 10 percent are purchased from pet shops. In addition, only 56% of dogs and 71% of cats that enter animal shelters are euthanized. The 10% of the animals received by shelters have been spayed or neutered, while 78 percent of dogs and 88 percent of cats are not spayed or neutered, in 2009 Statistics from animal shelters in 55 counties in WV (West Virginia) shows that nearly 54% of all animals entering shelters are euthanized, The euthanasia rates ranged from the lowest at 5% to the highe...
As an advocate of animal rights, Tom Regan presents us with the idea that animals deserve to be treated with equal respect to humans. Commonly, we view our household pets and select exotic animals in different regard as oppose to the animals we perceive as merely a food source which, is a notion that animal rights activists
Singer P. Animal Liberation. A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals. Avon Books. New York, 1975.
"Animal Abuse and Neglect : The Humane Society of the United States." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Puppy mills usually house dogs in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, without food, water and proper health care.
Factory farms have portrayed cruelty to animals in a way that is horrific; unfortunately the public often does not see what really goes on inside these “farms.” In order to understand the conditions present in these factory farms, it must first be examined what the animals in these factory farms are eating. Some of the ingredients commonly used in feeding the animals inside factory farms include the following: animal byproducts, plastic, drugs and chemicals, excessive grains, and meat from members of the same species. (Adams, 2007) These animals are tortured and used for purely slaughter in order to be fed on. Typically large numbers of animals are kept in closed and tight confinements, having only little room to move around, if even that. These confinements can lead to suffocation and death and is not rare. Evidence fr...
The ugly truth is that animals are dying at the hands of their owners everyday, some in very violent ways that can be avoidable given the right solution. Slaughterhouses, puppy mills, dog fighting, and so on, are just a few examples of how animals are being treated badly by people. Animal cruelty is a form of violence which, un...
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Call Number: HV4711.A5751992. Morris, Richard Knowles, and Michael W. Fox, eds. On the Fifth Day, Animal Rights. and Human Ethics.