Viva
7th grade
3/12/20
Have you ever wondered where your dog came from before you found it in the window of a puppy store? Well chances are they came from a puppy mill. So what is a puppy mill? Imagon metal grates stacked on top of each other for rows and rows in those grates are insane numbers of dogs with little to no food, shelter, water, or adequate care, this is a puppy mill, those dogs in the grates have no human interactions and are forced to breed over and over again. I believe people shouldn’t buy a dog from a place where you can’t verify where it is from such as puppy mills.
In places like puppy mills most dogs are mistreated. First of all, entire litters are faced with lack of food and veterinary care and suffer from exposure. If the puppies survive the nasty conditions of puppy mills, they are sent away on a dangerous journey to puppy stores, where they still don’t receive loving human contact. In addition, tiny puppies are forced away from their mothers and prepared to be sold to puppy stores. The preparation includes stuffing large numbers of puppies into crates with no food, water, shelter, or ventilation. The puppies are stuffed into disgusting, crowded kennels and sent on their way to the puppy shops. Mary-Jo Dionne, author of “Puppy Hell: The Horrors of Puppy Mills,” illustrates the scene of a puppy mill: “Picture, if you will, a warehouse. Imagine, within this warehouse, row after row and shelf after shelf of inventory stuffed into cramped, makeshirt cages. The ‘inventory’ in each box is half a dozen or more puppies, frequently hungry, sickly, and covered in the feces of the ‘inventory’ shelved above them. And above them.” This shows buying and dog from a place like this is just supporting puppy mills, not helping end them. In brief, these places clearly do mistreat their dogs which is unfair to the buyers and the dogs.
When buying a dog from these places, there is a high chance the dog was inbred or has diseases due to bad living conditions. To begin with, due to poor enforcement of laws, sick puppies continue to be sold in store fronts. Also, because of the high chance your dog was inbred, there is always the concern of bad temperament or health, and this sadly occurs quite often. For example, in an article published by PETA called “Puppy Mills: Dogs Abused for the Pet Trade,” the organization writes, “Dogs are bred for quantity, not quality, so unmonitored genetic defects and personality disorders that are passed on from generation to generation are common.” Have you ever thought about what happens to dogs that have genetic diseases or disorders? That’s right; they get killed. Although you may get a perfectly good dog, you have to think about how many dogs have been killed to get you that one good dog. Supporting places like this shows that you think of dogs as products not as living animals, just like the owners of puppy mills think.
Supporting these businesses only grows them and influences other people seeking to make a profit to do the same, at the expense of the animals. In fact, dogs are very easy to breed, and this allows people to produce a lot of puppies cheaply and make a large profit. Therefore, since this is such an easy market, it encourages people to do the same, instead of being the kind of breeder who spends the money to take good care of their dogs, which can be very costly. Regardless, I still believe people should seek to adopt puppies from rescues or shelters, because even with a high standard breeder, there’s still the chance the dog is inbred. But also, The Rolling Stone Magazine argues that online sales of puppies are “the perfect crime…Courts don’t care about out-of-state victims, and feds don’t even fine breeders, much less arrest them, for selling sick pups on bogus sites.” This shows that the courts aren’t going to do anything about it. That means we have to, and the only way to do this is to stop buying puppies from sketchy places like pet stores and websites that buy from puppy mills. Even though puppy mills can sell purebred dogs, they’re not worth it and you’re supporting bad business and showing other people they could do the same and nobody would stop them.
Even though puppy mills exist and will likely continue to exist that does not mean people should buy from them. Puppy mills are horrific places where no animal should ever have to live. Please think twice before you let yourself fall in love with that puppy in the window and help others do the same.