The Other End of the Leash

The Tragedy of Puppy Mills. One of the most tragic consequences of our reaction to cuteness is the inadvertent support of puppy mills. Puppy mills are dog factories, assembly lines for puppies that house breeding males and females in conditions that would turn your stomach. Puppy mills are everywhere, although they flourish in the South and the Midwest. They are one of the best-kept secrets in American society, and they cause tremendous suffering to untold numbers of animals. The last one that I visited raised each litter in small, hanging wire cages. The urine and feces were supposed to fall through the wire, except, of course, most of the waste remained, in the cage, so the puppies played in it for lack of anything else to do. (Good luck house-training those puppies.) The mother dogs were trapped with their litters for the entire seven weeks of their development, until the pups were sent to pet stores. Not letting a dog out of a tiny cage for seven weeks is abusive enough, but not letting a mother dog away from her puppies for even a few minutes is downright vicious. This particular puppy mill had more than three hundred adult dogs and one adult caretaker. There was no attempt to work with any individual dog and thus virtually no ability to judge the temperament of the dogs that were bred. The owner told me that “of course, all the dogs were gentle—even the caretaker's children could go into the pens.” But you can't necessarily predict how a dog in an empty pen will behave once he's part of a typical busy family. When I visited, I saw a variety of temperaments, from fearfully shy dogs to pushy, demanding ones. One set of dogs continually attacked another dog in the same cage every time we walked by. The dog was basically trapped inside a cage with a gang who beat him up daily for the hell of it. Many of the dogs had serious physical deformities, like over-and undershot jaws. Those problems can be serious and are genetically mediated, so no responsible breeder would have bred them. Dozens of the dogs at this particular puppy mill were covered in continuous tangles of matted fur, with hairs pulling on almost every inch of their skin. Most depressing to me is that this puppy mill (still going strong, by the way) is by no means the worst of its type. I stumbled across another one in which permanent cages were stacked three high, the higher dogs urinating and defecating onto the ones below. Each lower dog lived on a 1- or 2-foot-high mash of compressed urine and feces, her flesh covered in angry red sores. Their filthy water dishes were equally full of waste, with the colorful addition of green algae scum. Hidden from view, these concentration camps for dogs provide millions of puppies to pet stores and “agents,” where unknowing dog lovers take one look at that cute little fluff ball in the corner and just have to take her home. Even people who know better can't resist rescuing the poor little pup: after all, there she is, all big-eyed and needy, and what will happen to her if someone doesn't take her home? Once a puppy doesn't look like a puppy anymore, she's lost much of her value.8 Stores can't exactly stack the dogs on a back shelf until their fall sales come around. This isn't just a problem for the store; it's a potential crisis for the puppy. Even staying in the store for more than a week can compromise a puppy's development. Pet store “puppies” (read “adolescents”) learn to potty where they sleep and often can't be house-trained no matter what. Others are so socially damaged that they are miserable at best and dangerous at worst. By buying that cute little puppy, you are supporting puppy mills, allowing them to continue raising unsound animals from miserable, enslaved parents.