I love all animals, but most of all I love dogs. Dogs have lived among humans for thousands of years now and are very intelligent and caring animals. They are known for their sweet and devoting personalities and their love for their owners. Usually dogs are bred in safe conditions, but today most don’t get the same treatment.The puppy you hold when you go into places like Petland come from places called “puppy mills.”
According to the ASPCA, puppy mills are where they mass breed dogs. They don’t only mass breed dogs, but they breed them in the worst possible conditions. Puppy mills care more about the profit of their dogs rather than their condition they are kept in. That is why places like Petland charge thousands of dollars for their puppies and their staffers are required to say “you can come back if your puppy dies within a year and replace it with another puppy for equal or lesser value,” when you leave the store.
I don’t know about you, but that makes me wonder why they need to have that disclosure. Why do they need to tell their customers that?
The ASPCA states that this is because their puppies are coming from places that cram a female dog and her just-born litter into a small cage with little food and water, no sanitation and no veterinary assistance, meaning the puppies don’t get the proper amount of nutrients to grow properly and the mother doesn’t get the proper nutrients between each birthing. The ASPCA also says that some mothers are also forced to breed again with little to no recovery time in between each litter. They do not clean the cages at all, so the dogs are literally living in their own feces. On top of all this, they usually do not get any veterinary assistance until someone buys them at the store and hopefully takes them to be checked themselves.
I am not saying places like Petland are responsible for the conditions puppies are before they are sold, but they, and places like Petland, can very well boycott puppy mills by not buying puppies from puppy mills anymore. It is so simple to change the way our puppies are bread in the world yet, puppy mills are still a thing and have been a thing for years.The ASPCA estimates that there are about 10,000 puppy mills today, and that number scares me. Most people don’t even know puppy mills exist or don’t want to believe they exist. Puppy mills do exist, and the facts and pictures you read and see on the ASPCA and PETA websites about puppy mills are true.
I once got to hold a puppy at Petland that had been in the store for only a week. I was the first non-employee to hold and play with the puppy. The puppy acted like I was the first person to ever play with her, and she was 10 weeks old. She was much smaller and weaker than she should have been. The little one did not look healthy at all. Seeing this puppy brought tears to my eyes because she was so afraid to be out of her cage. All these puppies know are what they learned in that cage at the puppy mill.
I hope you take away from this that puppy mills are real — they do exist still today, and they need to go. The only way these places will shut down is if people know about them and take a stand against them.
