Posted on 04/26/2009 11:03:24 PM PDT by Chet 99
You would expect a program with a name like "Puppy Mills: Exposed" to be full of gruesome sights, and it is.
But perhaps the most dismaying moment in it is, at first glance, benign and trauma-free: It shows a chocolate Labrador retriever walking in a circle.
Only when you realize that the animal, which was rescued from a wretched breeding mill in Pennsylvania, is doing nothing but walking in a circle does the implication sink in. The dog was caged for so long, that that's all it knows how to do.
"Puppy Mills," an episode of "Animal Cops: Philadelphia" having its premiere at 10 tonight on Animal Planet, spends much of its time detailing a raid last summer at Limestone Kennel in Cochranville, Chester County, where the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found almost 90 dogs living in conditions that more than justify the "viewer discretion" warning at the beginning of the program.
Kennel owner John Blank, 54, offered free breeder dogs in a Lancaster newspaper ad and unknowingly gave nine dogs to members of Main Line Animal Rescue. Based on the dogs' ailing condition, MLAR tipped off the PSPCA, which sent an undercover agent to the kennel.
Blank illegally sold the agent a sickly 3-week-old puppy that died from dehydration a short time later. Pennsylvania law prohibits puppies younger than 7 weeks from being sold.
Within days, PSPCA raided Blank's kennel with the Animal Planet film crew in tow. They seized dogs with eyes missing because of untreated disease, severed ears, abscesses, skin conditions and splayed feet from years of standing in wire-floored cages.
Within a matter of days, the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement revoked Blank's license to operate Limestone Kennel, a move Blank didn't contest.
Blank was charged with three misdemeanor counts and 23 summary charges of animal cruelty for the condition of his dogs.
As part of a plea agreement, Blank surrendered 66 dogs to PSPCA. He pleaded guilty to eight summary counts of animal cruelty, two summary counts of failing to maintain a sanitary and humane kennel and one summary count of harassment.
He was fined $576, placed on 2 years' probation and forbidden from ever again operating a kennel.
Blank was permitted to keep two pet dogs. He also agreed to unannounced inspections by bureau wardens and officers from Chester County Adult Probation.
Operations such as Blank's exist to churn out puppies that can be sold to brokers, who then pass them along to pet stores and other outlets. They are a long way from a Norman Rockwell world where happy dogs romp in the yard and give birth once a lifetime.
Instead the mills view dogs merely as "puppy-producing machines," as Bob Baker, an investigator for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, puts it.
"They're just bred incessantly in horrendous conditions," he said bluntly. "And as soon as they don't come into heat regularly, they take them out and shoot them."
The program acknowledges but doesn't explore in depth the great contradiction in all this: While puppy mills are turning out dogs at an assembly-line pace, animal shelters are swamped and can't give their dogs away.
Thank you for posting this. The more people know about puppy mills and where Pet Shop puppies come from, the better.
There IS a responsible, ethical way to breed dogs. Puppy mills ain’t it.
These people really don't think that anything is wrong with this type of behavior...animals are expendable, man has dominion over them, and any type of cruelty or mistreatment is perfectly acceptable.
That attitude persists in many rural areas..."dog don't hunt; sick of feeding the stupid thing"...dog gets shot in the head.
But just keeping a bunch of sickly dogs that nobody would want, when they could be shot, makes no sense either.
I believe that Joe Biden just got a dog from a puppy mill outfit. What a fine example he set.
Puppy mills are horrendous! The people that run them should be hung.... slowly after they are water boarded for days on end.
Oh, stop it. They are sickly because of the way they have been treated in the case of puppy mills.
In the many cases of "this dog don't hunt" that I was talking about, there is nothing wrong with the dogs...except that their white trash owners don't find them "useful."
They spend their entire lives in kennels, getting some Ol' Roy thrown out every now and then...and I'm sure they are very excited to finally get out...happily following their owners out to the field; to be rewarded by a bullet in the head.
The same human debris also allow them to breed uncontrollably, and dump the puppies off out in the middle of country roads. Actually, that would be the classy white trash, the rest throw them in a bag and dump them in a lake.
Ah, the rural life, where the local Country Club had some members beat to death a bunch of Canada Geese with their golf clubs a couple of years back.
Thank God Shih-Tzu Rescue refused to give me the owner's contact information, or I would be in prison right now.
Once in a lifetime, my ass. They used to just drown them.
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