“Define a puppy mill.”
Hmmm...do dogs live in stacked cages? Does the breeder know their names? Are the puppies sold to individuals, or companies?
This is a classic case of needing some regulation, but not too much - a judgment call. HSUS wants to get rid of pet ownership. Period. They have come out before against retrievers, for example, because the dogs dive into cold water! They oppose Border Collies because the collies work in snow and rain. HSUS is insane.
But raising 800-1000 puppies/year to sell to puppy stores while city pounds are hard pressed to give dogs away doesn’t strike me as a reasonable way to care for animals, either.
Some interesting perspectives from the Border Collie side...I’m not a huge fan of the ABCA boards, but some discussions are enlightening, sometimes in both directions.
The Swedes have got it right, Why can’t the AKC and KC follow suit?:
http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=25941
Kennel Inspections, Government’s legal right:
http://www.bordercollie.org/boards/index.php?showtopic=25383
FYI - I gave up posting on their boards a long time ago, but still read them occasionally.
USDA does regulate commercial breeders. The abhorent ones we see (used as a brushck by HSUS and PETA to paint breeders) are already in violation of USDA regs. How would you know if a breeder knew all the dogs names? Shall we test them? What number do you set as an ok number of litters per year?
BTW many shelters have to import adoptable dogs from other places (sometimes foreign countries, altho that may not be happening now as it caused a hew and cry). The stats for pet overpopulation generally include feral cats (which are certainly not the fault of any breeder) and unadoptable animals (old, since, poor temperament).
So, tell me, what is your perfect law regarding pet breeding? FWIW I really don’t like commercial breeders either, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to regulate them out of business without regulating breeders in general out of business.
I have absolutely no problem with not letting pet stores keep cats and dogs for sale-selling them out of pet stores only encourages puppy and kitten mills to flourish because most pet store owners never see where the little animals come from-the puppy mill owners just put them into carriers, drive to the pet store, drop them off and collect their money. Animals bred for sale need to be kept in nice, clean surroundings with fresh air, proper care, room to run and exercise-even the sheep and goats my neighbor sells have a clean, nice barn and pen and plenty of food and water.
I wholeheartedly agree that PETA and HSUS are way out there on the sanity scale, though-pets are not people, no matter that we might think of ours that way.
I bought my Siberian Husky and every other dog I’ve ever owned from reputable, AKC recommended private breeders-not pet shops or unknown breeders. However, every cat I’ve ever had has come from an animal shelter. I have also sometimes fostered cats for the local animal welfare society, and two of my three cats are fosters whose forever home ended up being right here with me.
That said, my daughter does volunteer work for a local (non-HSUS) shelter in her community that, among other things reports puppy mills to the AKC and gets the animal cruelty people to bust them. She fell in love with and adopted an AKC Staffordshire Terrier pup confiscated from a puppy mill along with about 40 other purebred puppies and dogs-the dog is two years old now, and although he sounds like doom when the doorbell rings, he lets her cats use him for a pet bed. If he had been sold out of a pet store after spending his first few weeks in those awful conditions, he would likely have been psychotic, vicious or developed some chronic illness.
The conditions in that puppy mill were so terrible that the owners did jail time, in addition to fines (good). All of those puppies were destined for area pet shops, and many were sick with kennel cough and other respiratory infections. Some were deformed due to inbreeding. Fortunately all but two terminally ill dogs were adopted out.
I think puppy mill operators and the pet store owners who buy from them should be sentenced to a month of living in a little cage with only wire mesh for a floor, feces all over the place, no exercise and almost no food or water. Just my humble opinion...