Boycott Petland
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Hall of Shame, part 1
Pet Store Hall of Shame, part 2
USDA Violations by Petland Breeders
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Do Petland puppies really come from LICENSED breeders?
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Former pet store employees speak out
Buying puppies online--buyer beware
Pet Stores and Puppy Mills in the News
Animal sellers in Washington DC area
Pet supply stores that DON'T sell animals--the good guys:)
Puppy mill survivor stories
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1) PUPPY MILLS
Think about how you felt physically and emotionally the last time you were limited to a small area for only a few hours--taking the SATs, a long car ride, flying on an airplane, sitting through a day-long conference. Antsy? Claustrophobic? Like you would scream if you had to sit there for another day? Now think about having that sensation FOR YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. That is the horrible fate of breeding dogs confined to small cages virtually from birth till death in thousands of commercial breeding facilities, commonly known as puppy mills.
A puppy mill is a facility, large or small, that breeds dogs for profit. These facilities are notorious for ignoring the dogs' physical and emotional needs. The dogs go crazy from boredom, and their bodies waste away. Dogs are usually prized for their boundless enthusiasm and zest for life, but in puppy mills, they receive no compassion, and their spirits are broken. They live and die in pain and misery.
How do you tell if a pet store gets puppies from puppy mills? First of all, pet stores that have a large selection of purebred puppies (say, 20 to 30) year-round are almost guaranteed to be getting dogs from this type of facility, since otherwise they would not be assured of a constant supply.
Second, people who care about puppies look for good homes for them. They do not ship them off to be sold in pet stores.
A third indication that a pet store's puppies are mass-produced in puppy mills is if pet store employees are reluctant to tell you the name of the breeder or where the breeder's facility is located. They may say they get puppies from "private breeders." Puppy mills ARE private breeders. Our local Petland has cited a "strict privacy policy" regarding its breeders. On registration papers provided to customers, it has in several cases, and most likely in many other cases, failed to provide any information about the dog's breeder.
In Virginia, THIS IS ILLEGAL! Section 3.1-796.78 states that pet dealers who sell dogs with registration papers--such as AKC papers--must provide the NAME and ADDRESS of its breeders. Most likely, Petland fears that customers who see Missouri, Kansas, and other Midwestern addresses will think "puppy mills," since the Midwest is "Puppy Mill Central" in the United States. If you or anyone you know purchased a puppy at the Fairfax Petland and received papers that do not contain the breeder's name and address, PLEASE contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com.
In the case of Petland, there is clear evidence that Petland has obtained puppies from puppy mills. During an April 2000 Dateline NBC exposé of puppy mills and pet stores, investigators visited two of Petland's "private breeders." One facility housed over 500 dogs; the other, 200 dogs, all in cages. During their investigation at the first breeder, Dateline investigators never saw the dogs let out of the cages, but they did find dogs with neurotic behavior caused by long confinement. They saw filth on and around the dogs, maggot-infested food, timid dogs housed together with aggressive dogs, untreated wounds, broken bones, mange, open sores, and rotted teeth--conditions causing the dogs tremendous pain and long-term suffering.
A former truck driver for the second Petland breeder told Dateline of how her boss ordered her to throw a live puppy into a trash burner because he was sick. A sickly puppy purchased at a Petland store was traced to a third facility housing over 200 dogs. That puppy had expensive health problems including hip dysplasia and chronic diarrhea. This is not surprising, as puppy mills are also known for breeding animals with genetic defects as well as breeding dogs as often as possible, causing the mother to wear out and die young after producing many litters of sickly puppies.
After the story aired, generating a huge response from the public, Petland refused to be interviewed by Dateline. Petland merely sent a letter claiming the story was "unfair" and apparently did not pledge to change its operations in any way. If you would like to borrow a copy of the Dateline video, contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com.
Petland openly states on its website that it obtains many dogs from USDA-licensed breeders, as if this ensures a certain level of quality and humane care. Is that the case? The USDA requires that anyone with 4 or more breeding dogs who sells animals to pet stores be licensed. It has minimal requirements regarding food, water, sanitation, and space, but enforcement of the USDA's regulations is extremely lax. For example, the USDA requires that the commercial breeders have an exercise plan for the dogs, but they do not make sure that the plan is ever carried out. If more than one dog is housed in a cage, the dogs are not required to ever be let out at all. The USDA's head veterinarian, Ron de Haven, admits that only about half of the roughly 4,000 USDA-licensed facilities even meet USDA's minimum regulations, a disgraceful example of the USDA's failure to enforce existing animal-protection laws.
De Haven attributes this failure to the USDA not having enough inspectors, but even when the inspectors find problems, fining and closing down puppy mills is very rare. The USDA's mission is to support agriculture, and apparently it considers puppy mill owners to be "dog farmers" worthy of its protection. Bottom line: if you buy a puppy from Petland or other pet stores, it's very likely that his or her parents are enduring a lifetime of cruelty.
Petland's puppies also usually come with some kind of registration papers, such as AKC (American Kennel Club). Many people are under the false impression that this means the parent dogs are in good health. As the AKC will tell you itself, that is not true. The papers only mean that the two parent dogs were of the same breed, and the AKC takes the breeder's word that that is the case. (The sickly Petland puppy featured in the Dateline story turned out not even to be a purebred.) Parent dogs can be toothless, lame, undernourished, have serious genetic defects, and still have their litters of puppies registered with the AKC.
Haphazard breeding can result in both physical and behavioral problems. For example, one woman we met had purchased a puppy from the Burke Pet Center. The puppy was born in an Arkansas breeding facility. Although she has successfully housetrained many dogs, she has never been able to fully housetrain this one.
2) IN-STORE CONDITIONS
The broker (middleman between breeders and pet stores) for many Petland stores is the Hunte Corporation. The Hunte Corp. is based in Missouri, often considered the puppy mill capital of the country due to its large concentration of puppy mills. Other states with many puppy mills include Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania (especially Lancaster County).
After collecting puppies from many Midwestern breeding facilities, the Hunte Corp. weeds out the sickliest ones, classifying them as "Grade B." We have been told that the Grade B puppies are sold for low prices at flea markets or to people selling animals over the Internet. Hunte Corp. reportedly used to sell its sickest puppies in Rutledge, Missouri, but now does so at a flea market in Texas. The rest of the puppies are packed into its trucks and driven to Petlands and other pet stores all over the country, usually a stressful trip of several hundred miles. Neighbors near the Fairfax Petland have seen the huge Hunte truck that arrives with its weekly delivery and heard the cries of the puppies as they are unloaded. At the store, having spent their whole life of 8 weeks in cages, the puppies again spend most of their time in small cages.
According to veterinarians, the confinement of large numbers of animals to a small store, with new animals being added all the time, is an invitation to rampant infectious disease. The neatly stacked rows of cages at Petland resemble isolation chambers--ideal for driving people and animals crazy, but not a proper environment for animals adapted to life on this planet through millions of years of evolution. The barren cages do not allow the puppy to experience the outdoors, where a normally developing puppy would be able to see the sky, feel the sun and wind, and run and play with human and canine companions in the dirt and grass and leaves. Small cages do not provide a rich indoor environment for the puppies to explore. Rarely do the puppies ever have a soft surface to lie on, although even in the wild, animals seek out soft nesting spots. All Petland puppies have is a mesh-floored cage (uncomfortable for their feet), maybe a single chew toy, and, if they're lucky, a hard floor tile, about 1 foot by 1 foot, that is supposed to serve as their bed. The sad faces of the puppies entice well-meaning visitors into "rescuing" puppies by buying them, even for the outrageous prices of well over $1,000 per puppy that Petland usually charges (the adoption fee for dogs at our local shelter is $85). Of course, each time they sell a puppy, Petland orders more from the Hunte Corp.--approximately 25 puppies each week for one Petland store.
Since Petland's cages are standardized, one might assume that they are in compliance with all state anti-cruelty laws as well as laws that prohibit the sale of certain species, but this is not necessarily the case. The Petland in Fairfax, Virginia, was found to be in violation of the Virginia state law that prohibits pet stores from housing puppies in cages in which their feet could fall through the mesh. This went on for many months, even though it was obvious to any observer that the tiny puppies, such as Chihuahuas and Toy Rat Terriers, could only hobble painfully around their cages, their legs falling through the mesh each time they tried to move.
The Fairfax Petland also failed to consistently provide a solid resting platform until ordered to do so by Animal Control. When it did, it used one or two hard floor tiles that were still not completely solid. Some of the larger puppies, such as the Golden Retrievers, could only fit their two front legs on the tiles, not their whole body, as required by law. Recently, when a citizen reported the absence of ANY resting platforms in the cages, Petland admitted to police that it removed the platforms each night because they made a mess. This is against the law.
Petland was also selling one or more tarantulas, even though tarantulas are prohibited as pets in our county.
Puppies are by no means the only animals suffering in Petland stores. Petland also sells kittens, rabbits, parakeets, parrots, chinchillas, ferrets, hamsters, fish, and a variety of other animals. Because even fewer laws protect these animals, they most likely come from breeding and warehousing facilities even worse than puppy mills. These animals are also housed in cramped cages or aquariums at the store and are sold with a minimum of instruction on how to properly care for them. This can lead to premature death, abandonment, and for long-lived species such as parrots, many years of suffering in an inadequate environment.
People who take jobs at Petland because they love animals sooner or later find out, as one told us, "It's all about time and money." This employee saw a lot of deaths among the small animals at the Fairfax City store, particularly birds and hamsters, and saw that many of the puppies arrived with respiratory problems. The puppies also had sores from lying on the hard mesh cage floors. Another Fairfax City Petland employee tried to nurture the puppies and was told something along the lines of (not a direct quote), "They don't need petting; they're just money. If you want to do that, go to the shelter." An employee from another Petland told us that puppies are taken from their mothers at 5 weeks old and go through so much stress and handling that Petland recommends that once the puppy arrives at the store, he or she be left alone for 48 hours. Our local Petland puts puppies on display immediately, and they are available for sale about 24 hours later.
3) SICK PUPPIES
Kennel cough (bordatella) is so common in pet shop puppies that store personnel often pretend that it is a normal condition. It is not. It can develop into life-threatening pneumonia, and we know of three cases (and we expect there are many more) in which this occurred in puppies purchased at the Fairfax Petland. The puppies were coughing within a day or two after purchase. When the condition worsened and the store vet's office was closed, the puppies had to be taken to an emergency clinic, voiding the Petland warranty, which requires that the dog be brought to the store's vet. Petland offered to pay only a fraction of the vet bills. Pneumonia is only one of the illnesses found frequently in Petland puppies. For these and other stories about sick puppies from the Fairfax Petland, see our Hall of Shame section, Petland--Virginia--Fairfax.
What happens to the puppies who are rejected by Petland's store vet and are put back on the truck? According to someone who has worked on this issue for many years, they are not sent "back to the breeder," as we have heard Petland employees state. If they cannot be passed off to another stop the truck was making, they are sent back to the Hunte Corp., who subjects them to yet another long truck ride and sells them, along with other "Grade B" puppies, at a flea market or to people selling dogs over the Internet.
Several local vets who have treated puppies purchased at the Fairfax Petland have stated that the many of the puppies are sick. One said, "I HATE Petland!" Another said of a Petland puppy, "This puppy is a walking time bomb." A local trainer working with Petland puppies found many of them unsocialized, extremely difficult to train, and mentally and emotionally ill.
We have been disappointed by the failure of most veterinarians to take an ethical stand against pet stores and puppy mills. Dr. Michael Fox is a notable exception. He speaks out frequently about this issue, as in this column:
http://www.animal-advocates.org/info/display?PageID=1684
If you purchased a sick puppy at the Fairfax Petland, please contact us at all4theanimals@yahoo.com. We will not give out names of vets, former employees, and other people who give us information about Petland unless specifically given permission. But we do encourage people to ask their vets about the health of pet-store puppies, and we encourage veterinarians who care about animals to SPEAK OUT PUBLICLY against pet stores and puppy mills and not just tell their clients privately after they have racked up thousands of dollars in vet bills.
4) HOMELESS ANIMAL CRISIS
All this abuse is made worse by the fact that it is completely unnecessary. Petland sells animals for one reason only--profit--in flagrant disregard for the homeless animal crisis not only in our local area but the entire country. In 2003, in Virginia alone, over 60,000 dogs and 73,000 cats were killed in animal shelters. Nationwide, year after year, a conservative estimate of 3 million dogs and 4 million cats are killed in U.S. animal shelters due to lack of homes. For dogs alone, that's 6 killed every minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's estimated that a quarter of the dogs killed in shelters are purebreds. If you have trouble visualizing this tragedy because of the huge numbers of animals involved, please go to www.pleaserescueme.com/gone.cfm to see just a few of the innocent animals who have been killed simply for lack of homes.
The vast majority of the animals killed in shelters are healthy, friendly, and young. The 7 million dead does not even include the animals being killed outside shelters (for example, Greyhounds bred for racing and slaughtered when their racing days are over). While our local shelters and rescue groups struggle valiantly to rescue homeless animals, spending their energy and money to save innocent lives, Petland's contribution is to pump mass-produced animals into our community, as well as similar communities all over the country. IN FACT, EVEN WHEN DIRECTLY ASKED, OWNERS OF THE FAIRFAX CITY PETLAND REFUSED TO DISPLAY COPIES OF "PET LOVERS COMPANION," A FREE LOCAL DIRECTORY OF SHELTERS AND RESCUE GROUPS. Fliers accepted from a local rescue group were not visible anywhere in the store shortly afterwards. A former employee also reports that they were discouraged from mentioning shelters and rescue groups. Nevertheless, a spokesperson for the same store claims, "Whether it be through us, another pet store, a shelter, a rescue group, or a breeder, I want to make sure that my customers know all of their options."
Because the number of small animals killed due to homelessness is not even counted at shelters, many people are unaware that there is a homeless animal crisis among small animals, too. Our local rescue groups cannot even begin to save all the rabbits, birds, ferrets, iguanas, and many other small animals that desperately need homes.
Please do not buy ANY animal at a pet store, but please do contact local shelters and rescue groups (both purebred and mixed breed groups) if you can provide an animal with a good home.
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This article appeared in the May/June 2007 issue of The Animals Voice Magazine, www.animalsvoice.com. Reprinted with permission.
"Puppy Mills: The Truth Behind That Doggie in the Window" Part 1.
By Stephanie Banfield
Inside a small glass enclosure, a tiny ball of light brown fur with pointed ears and a black, whiskered muzzle nips at the tail of the rambunctious littermate with whom he shares a cage. The puppies bite each other's ears, chew each other's toys, and snuggle up together to lie down for a nap. This is the scene at a typical American pet store. This is Petland in Iowa City, Iowa. The puppies behind the glass range in breed from Shiba Inu to Shih-Tzu, from Dachshund to Golden Retriever. The price to take home one of these eight-week-old bundles of fur ranges from $500 to $1299. But what owners of pet stores like Petland don't want their customers to know is that the true cost of that puppy in the window is more than you might think.
Less than 75 miles away, in a small Iowa town near the Missouri border, the pet store puppies' parents spend every day of their lives within cramped metal cages upon wire floors strewn with dog hair and feces in a mass-breeding facility with little or no access to food, shelter, or veterinary care. Nearly 4,000 facilities like this one, known as "puppy mills," are scattered across the United States and supply pet stores and Internet websites with more than 500,000 puppies each year.
Forced to live in such horrendous living conditions, breeder dogs are often crammed into cages for years at a time without any socialization or exercise. Females are bred as frequently as possible, often ever six months, until they are no longer capable of producing large enough litters and are disposed of. Many puppy mill dogs are debarked by a metal rod shoved down their throats to rupture the vocal chords in order to keep mass-breeding facilities quiet. At five to eight weeks of age, puppies are taken from their mothers, packed into crates, and shipped to pet stores across the country. Without adequate food, water, or ventilation, many puppies don't survive the trip.
The plight of the pet store puppy is not new. Animal rights activists have fought the inhumane treatment of puppies raised in puppy mills for decades by boycotting stores that purchase their puppies from such deplorable conditions and willingly sell them to the unknowing public.
Lobbyists have been successful in their push for better legislation: in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) was adopted as a federal law to regulate the handling, treatment, and transportation of animals in a variety of situations, including puppy mills. So why are so many pet store puppies growing ill or even dying just days after they're brought home from pet stores that claim they only purchase animals from "reputable, local breeders"?
According to Deborah Howard, President of the Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS), a non-profit organization whose foremost concern is the abuse and suffering of pet shop and puppy mill dogs, "90 percent of pet shops obtain their puppies from puppy mills," which completely disregard the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of the animals they mass produce each year.
"Puppy mills exist solely for profit, with the dogs treated like puppy-producing machines that turn feed into puppies, much like factory-farmed hens are treated like egg-producing machines," said Pete Smith, an undercover investigator for CAPS whose name has been changed to protect his identity. "In both examples, the animals are often treated with a minimal standard of care with little or no concern for their well-being. The value of the dogs is not their worth as a companion, but as a means to profit."
Despite the horrendous conditions and numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) found in such facilities, most puppy mills continue to operate without consequence. Howard argues that this is a result of a lack of enforcement by the USDA, whose implementation of the Animal Welfare Act has been "grievously insufficient."
"The USDA has been extremely negligent over the years in its enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act as it pertains to commercial dog breeders and brokers," said Howard. "We have been investigating this problem since 1995 and, in some instances, we have investigated facilities the day after or before a USDA inspector found no violations. CAPS investigators found numerous non-compliant items. Falsifying an inspection report is a federal felony."
In addition to the horrors suffered by puppies born within the confines of puppy mills, the majority of these dogs are plagued by diseases and congenital defects that result from unscrupulous breeding practices and the lack of health and genetic screenings performed on breeding stock. According to CAPS, it is not uncommon for pet shop puppies to be treated for upper respirator infections, ear and eye infections, mange, coccidian, giardia, or even parvo once they arrive at the store or in their new home. Other problems, such as luxating patellas and hip dysplasia, often develop later in these puppies' lives-sometimes years after they were purchased.
Larissa Kosarych knows these problems all too well. She purchased Sampson, a pug puppy, from Pittsburg Robinson Town Centre Petland in Pennsylvania on January 9, 2005. Growing attached to the dog, she took him home where he "quickly became the love of my life." However, shortly after arriving in his new home, Kosarych's veterinarian examined the paperwork provided by Petland and immediately determined that he was bred at a puppy mill, despite the fact that Petland "fervently denied it." According to her vet, Sampson was most likely inbred and would suffer genetic problems such as seizures that would not appear for the next several years. Kosarych was devastated.
"I cried all the way home at the thought of not having a healthy, happy puppy," she said.
Less than five months from the visit to her vet, Kosarych's fears were realized when Sampson began to limp.
"I hoped that my puppy, only six months old at the time, had just bumped his leg and that the limp would go away in a couple of days," she said.
However, a week went by and the limping persisted, forcing her to return to the vet once more. An x-ray and joint tap of Sampson's hip provided the unfortunate diagnosis: Legg-Calve-Perthes disease.
Several weeks and a large dent in her checking account later, Kosarych's puppy was back to normal--or so she thought. A year passed and Sampson's vet noticed his other hip also had a limited range of movement. Test results confirmed the worst--another case of Legg-Calve-Perthes disease. The incidence of the disease occurring in both hips was a strong indication that the condition was hereditary and the result of poor breeding practices. Two years and $4,000 later, Sampson is "almost good as new," but Kosarych is still not satisfied.
"Spending this much money and putting a young dog through so much was infuriating to me," she said. "I took it up with Petland on several occasions, who managed to dodge my phone calls and otherwise ignore the problem."
Consumers like Larissa are not alone. A brief search on www.RipOffReport.com; Better Business Bureau, and www.PetStoreCruelty.org's "Pet Store Hall of Shame" reveal a slew of consumer complaints regarding various pet stores and "breeders" alike across the United States.
For years, animal welfare organizations such as the Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS) and Last Chance for Animals (LCA) (www.lcanimal.org) have staged undercover investigations of puppy mills in states such as Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. The footage provided by their hidden cameras and recording devices unveil the shocking tales of those puppy mill prisoners whose feet have never felt solid ground and rarely, if ever, get to see the light of day.
"I've seen dogs so covered in matted fur I can't tell what breed they are, and puppies' legs slipping through rusting wire floorings caked in feces," said Smith. "This, however, may not be as bad as the dozens of times I have walked into a kennel full of flies and the stench of ammonia to see hundreds of dogs spinning in circles and leaping over each other in an attempt to get my attention and have a moment's solace from an entire lifetime of being trapped in a cage."
Hearts United for Animals (www.hua.org), a national no-kill shelter, sanctuary and animal welfare organization, states that as many as 92% of puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills seeking to maximize profit. These dogs are not purchased from reputable hobby breeders whose goals include betterment of the breed characteristics, preserving bloodlines, and providing early socialization to the one or two litters they typically produce in a year.
"[Pet stores] just want to make money and don't care about the home into which their puppies are placed," said Howard. "Reputable breeders do not sell dogs to pet shops and, in fact, some breed clubs have rules that forbid their members from selling to pet shops."
Although investigations of facilities that sell to Petland reveal the horrendous conditions that characterize puppy mills, the store argues their puppies are only purchased from licensed, reputable "professional and hobby breeders who have years of experience in raising quality family pets."
And pet store customers, encouraged to act upon impulses to take home that cuddly ball of fur behind the glass, tend to believe them.
"Petland uses impulse buys to sell their animals. They train their employees to do everything they can to close the sale before the customer leaves the store, "says former Petland employee Katie Field. "So many times people enter the store without knowing they are going to walk out an hour later with a puppy. I would consider that an impulse purchase."
So how do consumers looking to purchase a new member of the family protect themselves from winding up with a puppy plagued by congenital defects and prone to chronic physical, psychological, and behavioral disorders? According to animal activist groups, there's only one way to ensure you're getting a healthy dog from a quality breeder-don't buy your puppy from a pet store.
"Reputable breeders will screen potential buyers," said Howard. "They will ask many questions about you, your family, including your animals, and your home. They will usually take back a dog for whatever reason, even years later."
Although it is indeed possible to locate a responsible breeder, most animal welfare organizations advocate rescue dogs.
"In light of the many millions of animals who are killed each year in shelters, we highly recommend that people adopt homeless animals from shelters and animal control facilities," said Howard. "PetsMart and PetCo often have adoption days for shelters and rescue organizations, and some veterinarians also take in homeless animals."
Other options available to those looking to purchase a purebred puppy are breed-specific rescue organizations and websites like PetFinder (www.petfinder.com) which allows prospective owners to search by breed, age, size, and location.
For activists fighting the puppy mill industry, education of consumers seems to be the only way to end the horrific plight of the pet store puppy.
"The most unfortunate thing about the pet store monster is the uneducated consumer," said Larissa Kosarych. "I was one a couple years ago when I fell in love with the puppy in the window. I didn't know that by buying a dog from Petland, I would only be greasing the puppy mill machine. I know that numerous people, just as naïve as I was about the consequences involved in buying a dog from a pet store, still walk into Petland every day and allow themselves to be suckered in by the cute faces and cajoling sales people. Virtually every time I meet a purebred dog owner I am sure to tell them how good it was if they got the dog from a responsible breeder and I follow up with the story of my 'million-dollar puggy.' If the information makes just one person think twice about buying from Petland, it has been worth my time."
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