Puppy mills are mass-production factories in which dogs are forced to produce litter after litter of puppies who are sold to pet stores and directly to consumers.  Hundreds, sometimes thousands of dogs per facility live in overcrowded and unsanitary cages without sufficient food, water, grooming, veterinary care or socialization.  Puppy mill dogs frequently suffer from genetic deformities and a multitude of diseases.

Puppy mills are an urgent, widespread problem.  There are an estimated 15,000 puppy mills in the U.S. alone.  That means within approximately 20 miles of every American household dogs are suffering in a puppy mill.  The businesses that support puppy mills are close to home as well.  More than 95 percent of the dogs in pet stores are from puppy mills.

In puppy mills, dogs are typically kept in small wire pens in sheds with no temperature control, or outdoors with insufficient protection from harsh natural elements.  They are exposed to extreme heat and cold as well as dangerously high levels of ammonia that arises from years of urine build-up.  Uric acid soaks puppies lying on cage floors, burns their parents’ skin and paw pads and causes respiratory distress.

The wire cage floors are meant to allow feces to drop through, but when cages are stacked, it falls onto the animals below.  Feces often cakes cages so heavily it becomes the only solid surface to which they can cling.  This is completely at odds with a dog’s natural instinct to live separately from their excrement but they desperately long to feel the security of solid ground beneath them.  The dogs are rarely, if ever, released from their cages to exercise or play.

Their imprisonment in cramped cages also causes urine and feces to mat the dog’s fur so severely that, frequently, their entire coat must be shaved off.  Once clipped, dogs that had first appeared much larger are often revealed to be extremely underweight and malnourished.  In some cases, their matting and confinement are so extreme that their fur actually grows into the cage, pinning the dog in one spot.

Overgrown nails are extremely common in puppy mills and can actually get caught in the wire and trap a dog to the cage.  Nails that are never trimmed or never worn down by walking or running on solid ground, can grow back into the skin.  This creates an infection that leads to painful suffering and extensive life-threatening medical conditions.  It is not unusual to find small collars that have not been changed as dogs have grown or that have been set so tightly that they have grown into a dog’s neck and must be carefully cut out.

Fighting is not uncommon in the overcrowded pens, which are too small for even one dog.  They spend most of their time unattended so they often injure one another and sometimes fight to the death.  It is not abnormal to find dead dogs on a weekly if not daily basis at a puppy mill.  Some dogs endure having portions their vocal chords removed to reduce the noise of their incessant pleas for help and attention.

Dogs also endure injuries from their dilapidated enclosures.  Unsanitary living conditions attract bugs and rodents and breed infectious illnesses.  The sick and injured dogs are rarely, if ever, seen by a veterinarian so their conditions result in endless suffering and sometimes death.

The health of a puppy mill dog is not even sustained by adequate food and water. If there is water at all, it is typically filthy and contaminated with algae growth, urine and feces.  Any food present is often infested with maggots and mold.

Some puppy mills keep dogs in windowless breeding boxes, which are typically smaller than the main cages.  Here, mother dogs give birth and live with their puppies through the weaning process, which is usually prematurely forced while the puppies should still be drinking their mother’s milk.  This early weaning causes both emotional trauma to both the mother dog and the puppies as well as health problems in the puppies.

Females are bred repeatedly, usually twice a year, every year, until they can no longer produce puppies.  Female dogs are commonly bred before it is safe to do so, as the earlier they start, the more puppies they will produce in a lifetime. Puppy mill breeding dogs are often given hormones to try and increase the number of puppies they produce.  Use of human medications, such as Viagra, has also been reported in male dogs on puppy mills.  These drugs can cause extreme pain and serious side effects when a dog is forced to have an erection for an unnatural length of time – all in an attempt to increase the number of puppies for profit.

American puppy mills produce and estimate 4 million puppies every year.  This number is almost equal to the number of dogs that are euthanized in shelters every year when they are not adopted.

When the breeding dogs’ bodies can no longer maintain a high level of productivity, they are destroyed.  Puppy millers are no longer profiting from these animals, so they dispose of them in the cheapest way possible.  They do it themselves, often on their property, by drowning, shooting, beating or burying the dogs alive.

The offspring of breeding dogs are expensive to keep and dollars are to be made, not spent, so puppies are taken from their nursing mothers as soon as they can be weaned, sometimes before.  These dogs not only miss the critical social learning skills that are essential to healthy canine relationships but they have often inherited problematic medical conditions from their parents.  Due to careless breeding and intolerable conditions, unsuspecting consumers are often buying sick puppies and will incur expensive veterinary bills trying to treat immediate health problems, such as parvovirus or genetic problems that reveal themselves years later.  This happens so often that many states have passed “puppy lemon laws” in order to attempt to hold the breeders and sellers responsible.

Mill owners increasingly advertise and sell through the Internet and newspapers, misrepresenting themselves as a reputable business.  The websites, almost 100 percent of the time, picture happy dogs romping in the grass next to a lake, when the reality for the dogs is a deplorable prison that forbids them any natural behaviors, depriving them of any joy.  When millers sell in-person they usually meet the customer somewhere away from their kennels.  They never let customers see where the puppy lived, where the parents are still suffering.

Federal law does not regulate breeders who sell puppies directly to the public though state cruelty and neglect laws usually require adequate food, water, shelter and vet care for sick animals.  However, puppy mills are mostly hidden in rural areas and often go undetected and the laws go unenforced.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal organization charged with enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, which sets basic standards of care for certain kinds of animals bred for commercial resale.  The USDA admits to a deficient and problematic record in the inspection of dog breeding facilities. There are a greater number of facilities than the number of inspectors to visit these facilities.  Often times, breeders are allowed to perform self-inspections.  In May 2010, the USDA’s Inspector General issued a scathing 69-page report addressing failures in inspection practices.  The report PDF report can be downloaded at this site: http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/33002-4-SF.pdf

Puppy mill dogs are forced to constantly breed while living in deplorable conditions.  By definition, there is no such thing as a “humane” puppy mill. Virtually all puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mill breeders.  Every penny that goes into the industry is helping it to grow – affecting more dogs in this vicious cycle of misery.