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Health & Fitness

Where Do Puppies Come From?

It depends

Puppies, of course, come from their mothers and fathers. If you watch Animal Planet's popular series, Too Cute, you'll see responsible, reputable breeders love and care for their animals in their homes. Moms are well-fed, seen by a vet as recommended, and comfortable. Puppies are coddled like human infants, their health and development carefully monitored. Some are bottle-fed if need be.

Moms have maybe 2-3 litters and are retired for the sake of her health and to aim for the healthiest puppies possible. Most owners were selected before the puppies were born.

If you get your puppy from a pet store, online or newspaper ad, the reality is starkly different. The parents probably never saw a vet, never had a nutritious meal and their puppies are born in wood or concrete boxes covered with wire. Food is dumped in feeders every two weeks. They spend six weeks or so together in the box before the puppies are trucked out to our local pet stores or shipped all over creation via online sales.

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There are no blankets, no coddling, and no vet care. Mom is returned to her wire-cage, unbathed, not even a pat on the head. Her unhealthy puppies are literally thrown aside to die. Your puppy came from a puppy mill.

The puppy mill puppy may cost a few hundred dollars less than the well-bred one and there is instant gratification. You buy it and take it home the same day like a video game. Your kids are overjoyed, you got the breed, or mutt, oh sorry, "designer dog" you thought would be best. You got your cute puppy with papers.

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But what did you pay with? The real cost is our decades-long support of animal cruelty. It is sentencing puppy parents to barren concrete and wires, no toys, no exercise, no human contact or socialization. It is an AKC-registered farce where papers are sold, not earned. It is, if I may be dramatic, our own humanity that was just sold. It also dooms more breeding parents to this terrible existence. 

Impossible, you say. The nice man at the pet store told me he would never buy from a mill, they follow strict USDA guidelines and my daughter's friend's cousin works there. The woman I spoke to on the phone even sent me pictures of the award-winning, champion-line parents looking regal in the perfect outdoor setting. I even picked my puppy from a picture. News flash, they are lying to you. Big time.

USDA guidelines allow what I described above and much worse. Online sellers are not regulated at all. Who in their right mind would send loved, cared-for puppies across state lines to a person they've never met in a home they've never seen?

Would you believe a total stranger who said I have a fenced in yard, someone is home all the time, this puppy will be loved, trained, he'll eat only the best food, and sleep in our bed, just put your 7-week-old puppy on a plane to Pittsburgh or FedEx him to Miami? Of course not! You, the reader of this blog, may be a very nice person, and I can only hope you realize this is insane.

Why are we so quick to believe the horrors of dog fighting, outraged over animal abuse when it happens next door, but can somehow guilt-free BUY a puppy mill puppy just to satisfy our own needs? Please, be outraged about what happens to your puppy's parents in their Midwestern prison cell. Be outraged that the Amish own 25% of all USDA-licensed puppy mills (not certified, that doesn't even exist) and they also kill dogs who are sick, unsold or can't produce puppies.

Most of all be outraged that our neighbors, the people you meet in the grocery store, at school functions and houses of worship, are aiding and abetting this animal cruelty, making you a part of it. These seemingly decent suburban parents are worse than white collar criminals, just as bad as dog fighters. They are retail pet sellers and employees. They are also the fools called backyard breeders, a future blog topic.

Put your outrage to good use 

Mad? Excellent. Now pledge to never buy a puppy or kitten online, in a pet store or from a newspaper ad. Don't spend a dollar in a store selling puppies or kittens. Shelters and breed rescue groups have plenty of purebreds and designer dogs (they'll work on catchy names for mutts).

Still mad? Promise to tell one person a week about what you know. When someone tells you about their recent pet purchase, don't strangle them. Take the time to non-judgementally explain why they should not do that again.

Google puppy mills for more information.   

Blood still boiling? I hope so, here's the big one. Get involved, here's how:

Find like-minded people on Facebook. You will learn and do a lot of good. 

Call your local pet store and politely explain why you will never give them a dime. Email or call your state senator, contact info here: http://www.nysenate.gov/ and tell him you want him to sponsor S3753 so we can locally ban the retail sale of pets like they did in Los Angeles and over 30 other cities in the US. More on that in my last blog .

Call Tom Vilsack, head of the USDA, at 202-720-3631 and tell his office you want online puppy/kitten sellers to be regulated by the USDA (they do a lousy job, but it's a start).

Want to stay mad and have proof for your friends that think you're nuts? Visit these reputable organizations:

http://www.petshoppuppies.org/_videoplayer/myvideoplayer.html (The Tribute has pictures of those "strict USDA guidelines" at work).  

http://www.caps-web.org/

http://www.citizensagainstpuppymills.org/

As always, if you purchased a puppy with any health problems, NYS needs to know about it, even if the pet store made restitution. They can't investigate what they don't know about. The online complaint form is at this link: http://www.agriculture.ny.gov/petdealercomplain.html

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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?