The Real Cost of that Adorable Puppy in the Window
Raised in torturously tiny, cramped cages, often covered in their own waste, puppies from puppy mills, or, more accurately, breeding facilities, are commonly shipped to pet stores before even being weaned. Their mothers, reduced to breeding machines, are forced to reproduce litter after litter until "used up," and then are immediately killed in brutal fashion or sold to research labs.
The mothers spend their entire miserable lives in cages whose interior space reaches six inches in front of them, thwarting every natural instinct and leading to behavioral obsessions like turning constantly in circles. They stand on wire flooring that rips the skin off their feet. They are starved of proper nutrition or any taste of freedom from suffering, often sick with infections and untreated open sores. Puppy mills are merciless and harrowing places, greed run amok in the absence of any regulatory standard of care.
This horrific barbarity is just part of the tale. Every puppy purchased from a pet store means one more adorable dog from a shelter will never find a home. Every year, over five million dogs and cats are needlessly killed in U.S. shelters.
Help make the puppy mill industry a relic of the dark past by only adopting, never buying a puppy again.
