Puppy Mills

http://www.sonomapets.com/?p=791

Puppies. Adorable, fluffy puppies. Everyone loves them, right? Well, if you absolutely love cute, snuggly puppies this is not going to be fun to learn about.

Do you have a puppy? Do you want a puppy? Do you know where your puppy came from, or where you would get your puppy in the future?
From a breeder?
From a shelter?
From a pet store?

Although this may not seem like a very important part of owning a puppy-who really cares where you get it?- it really is a good thing to think about.
Because you may be unknowingly be contributing to a horrible form of animal abuse-puppy mills.
The thing is, nobody knows about puppy mills, so they continue to grow and grow.

So...Why are puppy mills so bad?

http://www.okpuppymilltruth.org/images/mill2.jpg

Puppy mills keep their dogs in tiny, cramped cages, ith inadequate food and water. The cages are not heated in the winter or cooled in the summer. Many of the dogs die from heat stroke,  or they freeze to death. Because of the lack of space and the number of dogs in each cage, many dogs fight with each other and die from injuries.
Hundreds of thousands of puppies are raised in puppy mills each year. Females are bred as soon as they are old enough, and each year after. When they finally become too old to breed, they are shot.

Many people wonder that if puppy mills are so bad, why do they continue to grow?
Well, like we mentioned earlier, not many people know about puppy mills. They buy an adorable puppy in a pet store, not knowing that it came from a puppy mill. This brings the mills more and more money, funding their growth.
Food for puppy mills is brought in by the truckload. Its very poor quality, and is dirty and gross when fed to the puppies. In order to minimize cost, the puppies never have vet checks.
So when you get the puppy...
Before a puppy sold, it has very little human contact. So naturally, they're probably scared of us, so many puppies are mean to humans. Also, because they have probably never had a vet check in their life and because of the conditions they have been kept in, they usually have many physical and emotional problems that can end up costing the family thousands of dollars in vet bills.

Unfortunately, its going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time to stop these puppy mills. So if you're planning on getting a puppy, check out a shelter or a trusted breeder! This will help stop the funding of these horrible places.