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Black and White Sunday #185 – Puppy Mill Survivors
Today is national Puppy Mill Awareness Day. Daisy and Cupcake (above) are both former puppy mill breeding dogs. They were fortunate enough to be rescued before they could be killed, but many puppy mill breeding dogs are not so lucky.
When you buy from a pet store or online, you are buying from a puppy mill. And when you buy from a pet store or from an online website, you are guaranteeing that the parents of that puppy will continue to live in feces, be covered in fleas and suffer untreated medical ailments, including rotting teeth and jaws. You are also guaranteeing they will be killed by shotgun or through torture.
Please don’t buy a puppy from a pet store. Please don’t buy a puppy from the internet.
Adopt. There are so many dogs in need. So many of them are in shelters or with a rescue, and 90% of the time, through no fault of their own.
When puppy millers stop seeing sales, they will stop, but in order for that to happen you need to stop too.
My thanks to our hosts for this blog hop Dachshund Nola and Sugar The Golden Retriever.
Unfortunately, WordPress.com doesn’t allow Java script so I can’t provide a direct link to the linky, but you can join here.
Minnesota puppy mill on List of Horrible Hundred – S G Kennels
Every year the Humane Society of the United States issues their list of Horrible Hundred puppy mill breeders. In past years, there have been at least 3-5 Minnesota breeders on their list. This year, there is just one. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s the worst of the lot, multiple violations over many years.
Here are just a few details on S G Kennels, owned by S Glance Vilken, in Roseau, Minnesota:
- Has been found to be in violation of the Animal Welfare Act with every USDA inspection done between 2013 – 2016. (Isn’t it amazing that you can break the law year after year and still be in business?)
- In the latest inspection, conducted in February 2016 (yes, this year), she was cited for not providing adequate care for two dogs, even though the inspector instructed her to do so in multiple citations.
- One of the dogs she was ordered to get help for was first seen in June of last year. The puppy was 16 weeks of age back then and had an eye issue that caused drainage from the eye. The inspector thought the dog was experiencing pain.
- The owner failed to get the dog looked at by a veterinarian, even after 3 more inspections indicated she should do so.
- The second dog was a Pomeranian with advanced dental disease and had symptoms of a severe ear infection. The dog had discharge from both gums and from the infected ear. (Can you imagine being forced to breed and care for puppies while in extreme pain?)
- The owner has been cited numerous times for filthy conditions, sharp rusty points in the kennel area that could hurt a dog and for not providing proper vet care.
Reading that would make any caring human being cringe. How callous does a human have to be to let a dog suffer through dental disease and a severe ear infection? Neither the breeder or the USDA seem capable of taking action to stop this dog’s suffering. (If you don’t know by now, the USDA is useless when it comes to shutting down mills like this.)
You might be asking me at this point… But, didn’t you guys just pass a puppy mill law? Why can’t this place be shut down through that law? Good question.
Yes, we did pass a puppy mill law in the state of Minnesota. Unfortunately, we decided to give responsibility for enforcing that law to a state organization that prefers to collect a paycheck while sitting on their asses, the Minnesota Board of Animal Health. They pretty much give carte blanch to Minnesota puppy mills.
Why do I say that? Look who is on the Minnesota Animal Board of Health‘s approved breeder’s list:
The moral to the story? The titles “USDA certified” and “Minnesota Licensed Breeder” means nothing. If you are buying a dog from this place, you might as well set up a running account with your local vet because dogs that come from puppy mills like this are a genetic mess and you will be paying lots of money for their healthcare in the future.
Want to know if a breeder is a good one? Ask to stop by and meet the adult parents and puppies. If they take you to a barn to show you one dog, or they tell you they don’t like people to stop by, don’t buy from them. They are hiding atrocities like this. Never buy from a pet store or online. You are buying from a puppy mill if you do, and that makes YOU part of the problem.
The ASPCA Rehabilitation Center that is changing the lives of damaged dogs
Foster Maggie telling me it’s too much pressure to “touch” my finger when I am this close.
If you would have asked me what my dream job was five years ago, I would have said professional pet sitter. It was what I was doing at the time, and I loved it. I loved caring for other people’s pets and making them feel loved while their parents were away. I also loved being able to train and socialize the ones I walked each day. Puppies were the easiest, they were always so eager to learn, but what always got me excited was working with a shy or fearful dogs. I can’t explain it, but there is something so rewarding about being able to build their confidence and win their trust.
Even when I volunteered at our local shelter, it was the shy or fearful ones I was most drawn to each day. In the 8 1/2 years I was there, those were the dogs I woke with most. I think it’s in my DNA. It’s most certainly how I met my dogs Indy, Daisy and Jasper.
Several years ago, I heard about a small facility that was being set up as a pilot site to work with and better understand how best to help dogs coming from dog fighting rings, puppy mills and hoarding cases.
Operating out of St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in Madison New Jersey, the ASPCA Behavioral Rehabilitation Center rehabilitates dogs that are damaged and traumatized by abuse and neglect. Their goal? To give dogs, most likely to be euthanized at local and county shelters, a new leash on life.
Back when I first read about it, it was more of a proof of concept, an experiment designed to prove that these dogs could be rehabilitated. But, it was also a study into learning what worked and didn’t work when rehabbing these dogs.
Fortunately, it appears they are succeeding. Thanks to the ASPCA and the wonderful people working at the ASPCA Behavioral Rehabilitation Center, dogs are successfully being rehabbed and placed into new loving homes.
And now, they are ready to graduate and take it to the next level. Recently, they announced that they will be moving to a brand new (and much larger) facility in Weatherville, North Carolina in 2017. This is HUGE news. For those of us who work with puppy mill dogs, it means we may soon learn more about how best to help these dogs recover from abuse, trauma and neglect, and that really excites me.
This is my dream job! Think they would be open to a Minnesota transplant with a silly Fargo-like accent? Would it work if I made up a sign “Will rehab dogs for food?”
A person can dream, can’t they?
If you want to learn more about the ASPCA Behavioral Rehabilitation Center, there is a great piece on it in NJ.com: Meet the ‘miracle’ dogs: N.J. center rehabilitates animal cruelty victims
Wordless Wednesday #273 – Miss Maggie in Winter
