Puppy Mills -- Much worse than you thought
This article by Ginnie Maurer of Animal Advocates and FOHO Legislative Action shows that ‘puppy mills’ do exist in West Virginia. We need to tell our legislators to support legislation in the 2012 session to regulate these large commercial breeders.
Ginnie Maurer
In August 2008, almost 1,000 puppies and adult dogs were rescued from a puppy mill breeding facility tucked away in the backwoods of West Virginia.
Two national animal rescue organizations, Best Friends Animal Society and The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), along with the Humane Society of Parkersburg and Wood County law enforcement officials, worked in 90+ degree heat amid the stench of feces and urine to rescue these dogs from the Whispering Oaks Kennels.
According to news reports, the owner of the kennel turned over the animals and signed an agreement barring her from operating another breeding facility. She was not charged with animal neglect because of this agreement.
Two years later, in August 2010, almost 100 dogs were seized from Yip Yip Kennels, Martinsburg, West Virginia. The owner, Leonard Woods, Jr., pleaded guilty to 20 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $300 for each count plus court costs. He is barred from owning or possessing any animals for five years.
Several months later, in December 2010 in Falling Waters, West Virginia, 114 dogs were relinquished from a puppy mill. With the swift action of Berkeley County Animal Control and the support of Animal Advocates of West Virginia, all puppies and adult dogs were either adopted or transferred to rescue organizations in less than 24 hours following their seizure. The owner of the dogs, Paulette McGraw, was charged with one count animal cruelty and fined $1,000 and court costs.
By no means are these few instances isolated examples of puppy mill activity in West Virginia. Since there is no reporting or registration of puppy mills required by law in the state, no one has an exact number of the mills operating here.
History of puppy mills
Puppy mills are not a new phenomenon; they actually began in the late 1940s as a way for Midwest farmers to make money following widespread crop failures. In fact, it was the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the same government agency authorized to inspect and regulate puppy mills, that began promoting puppies as a new cash crop.
Farmers took to the new crop quite readily, as raising puppies was far less labor intensive (when done the puppy mill way) than tilling the land to produce food for the table.
In addition, farmers already had many outbuildings—sheds, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, and the like, they could convert into puppy cages, making the transition from produce to puppies fairly easy.
But, puppies could not be sold on supermarkets shelves; so farmers had to find a new market for this new crop. In the early days, Sears Roebuck sold puppies in its pet departments, but farmers needed more outlets. Along came puppy stores and with them puppy brokers, people who would deliver the puppies from the mills to the pet stores.
Puppies would often travel in the back of pickup trucks or stacked in cages in tractor trailers for transport hundreds of miles from where they were born; today, that is the way most of them still travel to markets around the country.
The greatest concentration of puppy mills is still in the Midwest, but almost all states have puppy mills somewhere within their borders. According to information supplied by HSUS, there are an estimated 10,000+ puppy mills across this country. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has been considered the puppy mill capital of the East.
The state with the highest concentration of puppy mills is Missouri, followed by Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. Nebraska also ranks high in the number of puppy mills.
Conditions at puppy mills
What is your vision of hell? For breeding dogs and their puppies, hell is living in a puppy mill. Dozens to hundreds of dogs live in wire cages, usually out in the elements, with only rudimentary shelter from broiling sun, sleet and freezing rain, snow, etc.
Several dogs may be crammed into each cage. Dogs can be found spinning, obsessively chewing on themselves or their cage mates, howling, and languishing because there is no physical or mental stimulation.
Food and water may be covered in feces and urine. Paws can be caught in the wire or frozen to the bottom of cages. And that’s the good news.
To keep noise down at these breeding kennels, breeder dogs may be debarked. Since surgery is expensive, some millers simply shove a pipe down the throat of a dog and crush his or her vocal cords.
In addition, puppies, suffering from a variety of diseases due to these unsanitary conditions and lack of proper nutrition, or who cannot nurse, are often left to die; the deformed and seriously ill puppies may be killed instantly with a quick snap of the neck or are suffocated in plastic bags.
Nursing mothers have prolapsed uteruses that are left hanging from their bodies. Most females are bred out by age five, at which time they are often shot in the head and dumped into open pits.
Male breeding dogs may live a bit longer but their fate is no different.
Puppy mills exist because owners want to make money. There is no love of the breed or desire to preserve breed characteristics. How can there be? Pugs are mated with beagles and called puggles. Anything is mated with a poodle and called a ___-poo.
These so-called designer dogs are often sold for thousands of dollars. As long as the public continues to pay the price for these “designer mutts,” the dogs in puppy mills continue to pay a price, too—with their mental and emotional health and ultimately with their lives.
Puppy mill dogs are poorly socialized to humans and may, in fact, be terrified of humans based upon the treatment they have received. With few staff to care for them, little to no veterinary care, and hours upon hours spent in isolation, few of these dogs are touched by human hands except to be moved from their puppy mill cages to transport vehicles and back again to cages in pet stores.
Many are terrified of grass, sunlight, and carpet, as well. Some never get over their fears even when rescued and placed in the homes of loving, understanding people who are willing to help them overcome the abuse of their early years.
Of course, conditions in the pet stores where many of these dogs wind up are not always much better. Puppies are again kept isolated although the cages may be a bit cleaner since the general public is now viewing them.
However, to ensure the puppies remain healthy until purchased, their food is often laced with antibiotics. And, if the store owner is not inclined to seek veterinary help for sickly animals, he might just do what a pet store owner in Fairmont, West Virginia, is alleged to have done.
In April 2010, Aaron Ashley was arrested and charged with felony animal cruelty after dogs, cats, mice, and reptiles were found frozen to death in the store’s freezer. According to investigators, Ashley did not want to pay for veterinary care for these animals, so he put them in the freezer while they were still alive.
Sales from puppy stores are typically final, meaning the buyer has no recourse to take the puppy back if something is wrong with the puppy. If a store does replace a sick puppy, most likely the sick puppy will be killed rather than given the veterinary care he or she needs. Of course, there is no guarantee the replacement puppy will be healthy either.
That leaves many buyers of puppy mill puppies with a terrible decision:
(1) to return the puppy knowing he or she will be killed
(2) or to save the puppy at what might be great financial and emotional expense with no guarantee the puppy will survive.
Who’s in charge?
The USDA, which, according to HSUS, employs approximately 102 inspectors to oversee more than 9,000 facilities, licenses and inspects some large-scale dog dealers and breeders under the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). However, AWA guidelines are not optimal care standards but rather minimal survival standards.
For instance, cage size requirements include a minimum of 6” head room. Facilities can be in compliance with the AWA while still keeping hundreds of dogs in small, stacked wire cages, without enrichment or human attention, for their entire lives.
In addition, many USDA-licensed breeders are inspected only every two to three years so violations can be rampant but never addressed.
According to Mike Fry, executive director of Animal Ark, Minnesota, “[A] report recently released from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) documents terrible conditions in the nation’s puppy mills, which the report refers to as ‘problematic dealers.’
Furthermore, the report, which was the result of an audit conducted by the OIG, outlines gross failures of the USDA in regulating these facilities.
As part of this audit, OIG auditors visited 81 ‘facilities’ and reviewed records documenting 28,443 violations over a two-year period.
USDA findings in puppy mill audit
The 50-page audit report paints a depressing picture of commercial dog breeding operations in America and a damning critique of the agency that is supposed to regulate them.
The following were included among the findings:
• The agency believed that compliance would come about as a result of education and cooperation rather than through law enforcement.
• The agency chose to take little or no enforcement action against violators.
• Attendance at educational seminars intended to bring about compliance from breeders was voluntary, even for those with violations.
• ‘No Action’ was taken even in cases where the law required it.
• Fines were incorrectly calculated to consistently and dramatically reduce the costs to violators.
• Violations were incorrectly counted, consistently minimizing the citations.
• Violations were incorrectly documented.
• Animals were not confiscated, even in cases of severe neglect and abuse resulting in the deaths of animals.
• Citations were written in such a way as to minimize or eliminate requirements for re-inspections.
• USDA failed to notify local law enforcement of serious violations, as is required by law.
• Many commercial breeders are not even regulated by the USDA.
On a personal note, the author was scouting out a store that sells puppies in the Martinsburg, West Virginia, area. She asked the owner of the store, in front of patrons who appeared interested in purchasing one of the puppies, where he obtained his puppies.
The owner immediately stood straight and tall and with great bravado informed her he did not purchase his dogs from puppy mills but rather from USDA-inspected dealers. The patrons were quite impressed with this statement.
Further, he ticked off a list of items indicating how well the breeding dogs were cared for in these facilities. Again, the patrons were quite impressed. Unfortunately, the author did not ask the owner if he were familiar with the OIG’s report that had just been released weeks earlier.
The U.S. government isn’t the only one that can regulate puppy mills. Each individual state can regulate puppy mill breeders as it sees fit. In recent years, some large-scale breeders have had their licenses revoked by the USDA but continue to be licensed by their states and can sell directly to the public and through the Internet.
Legislation varies widely
Current animal cruelty laws in most jurisdictions simply are not adequate to halt the widespread proliferation of puppy mills. Every state has laws against some forms of animal cruelty. However, few states address the issue of wide-scale animal abuse as it occurs in puppy mills.
Without laws that require special licenses to run large breeding operations and to allow for the routine inspection of these facilities, puppy mills will continue to flourish.
In recent years, more states are becoming aware of the gross inadequacy of their laws to protect puppies in commercial breeding facilities. Some recent states to enact legislation have been Pennsylvania, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Missouri—some of the leading puppy mill states. While these bills have faced challenges and some have been amended, citizens of these states are educating themselves and their legislators on the need to protect dogs in commercial breeding facilities.
Some states, including Virginia, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington, have set limits on the number of breeding dogs in commercial facilities.
Puppy Mill Legislation in WV
In 2011, as in 2009 and 2010, puppy mill legislation was introduced in the West Virginia legislature. The most recent attempt, HB 2883, sought to protect dogs by creating regulations for commercial dog breeding facilities. Some provisions of the bill included:
· limiting the number of unsterilized dogs over the age of one year to 50 and requiring the commercial breeder to have a valid business license, as required by his or her jurisdiction
· commercial breeders would have to provide for the humane treatment of dogs in accordance with section 19 article 8, chapter 62 of the West Virginia code
· they would have to provide dogs with easy access to adequate amounts of clean food and potable water
· breeders would also have to provide appropriate veterinary care, including rabies shots and, if needed, euthanasia by a licensed euthanasia technician and to remove sick dogs and isolate them so as not to endanger the health of other dogs.