The horrors of puppy mills

This week on the Oprah show, the talk show hostess did a piece on puppy mills.
She had horrifying videos of the way that puppy mills operate, and vowed never to ‘buy’ another animal from any type of breeder.
To legitimate dog breeders, those puppy mills are not the way dogs should be bred. Good, honest breeders do a lot of work before ever breeding their dogs, including making sure that the dogs have no conformation or personality problems, and do not have any inherited diseases.
It’s easy to point the finger at puppy mill owners, or blame the animal control folks who are in the towns where puppy mills are found.
But I want to point a finger at the one organization that can stop this atrocity, but won’t. The American Kennel Club, who registers all of these puppy mill puppies, claims to be a registration organization only, and has no power to shut down puppy mills.
Bull. If the AKC made sure that the dogs it registers came from legitimate, good breeders, puppy mills would grind to a halt.
But in 2006, the AKC brought in more than 3 million dollars in revenue. And guess what, a lot of that revenue came from puppy mill owners. After all, everyone wants an AKC-registered puppy, and that’s what the puppy mills give them.
The AKC is supposed to do checks on breeders, so how are these atrocious puppy mills staying in business? It’s about the almighty dollar, that’s how.
In order to stop puppy mills, we need to stop buying puppies from pet stores or questionable breeders. If a breeder advertises puppies, and then tells you that you can’t see their kennels, or that the puppy has to come from another state, big red flags should go up. Any legitimate breeder is more than happy to show you his or her breeding stock, where the dogs live, and will be very picky about who gets their puppies.
There is a way to support the purebred dog, but it’s not by buying any pup that you have any questions about. Buy from responsible breeders, and don’t expect someone else to ‘fix’ the puppy mill problem. It’s up to you.