Undercover
Investigations and Exposé Reveal The Horrors of the Puppy Mill
Industry
From
a breeder's desire to kill an injured puppy, rather than give her to IDA's
Doll Stanley...to the anger that drove a puppy mill owner to shoot at
IDA's Marshall Smith, the violence, callousness and cruelty of the puppy
mill industry knows no bounds.
Fortunately
for the puppy now named Hope, Doll has saved yet another life. Determined
not to see Hope die, Doll has managed to rescue her and place her in a
loving home.
And
fortunately for Marshall, and the TV crew that had accompanied him to
a Missouri puppy mill, the shotgun blast narrowly missed its mark, lodging
instead in the TV crew's van.
For
three years, Marshall, Doll, and IDA's late Midwest Coordinator Gretchen
Hersmann waged a dangerous but effective war against the puppy mill industry.
In the process, they documented and ended some of the most horrendous
animal abuse and neglect imaginable.
Their
undercover videos have revealed dogs dead or dying of starvation and neglect...their
hair matted with excrement, their teeth rotting, their eyes ulcerated.
Mother dogs trying frantically to get away from their dead or dying cagemates...the
stench and filth of their living conditions appalling.
Turned
into breeding factories and crammed into wire-floored cages literally
to small to walk in, these innocent victims of the puppy mill industry
are bred to exhaustion...their bodies physically spent by the age of five...at
which time they are taken to auction, sold to labs, or simply shot.
Posing
as a pet-shop owner in need of puppies, Marshall has peeled back the veil
of secrecy and exposed the cruelty that is the puppy mill industry.
His
investigations have appeared on local and national TV shows, including Hard Copy and Extra. His latest success in bringing the
horrible reality of the puppy mill industry to the public was a Readers
Digest Special Report titled, "Scandal of America's Puppy Mills."
The
report educated millions of people to the tragedies of the puppy mill
and pet shop industries.
The
following statements by William Ecenbarger, author of the special report,
reveal the appalling abuses he witnessed.
"When
I saw the conditions in which these puppies were raised, I was stunned.
The animals lived in small wire cages stacked four and five high. Some
puppies had open sores from lying on the metal wire. Urine and feces from
upper cages dropped into the ones below.
"I
visited 53 puppy mills. What I saw not only broke the law, it broke my
heart."
Mr.
Ecenbarger told of a Florida puppy mill
raided by and closed down by the police:
"When
police and humane officials arrived they were greeted at the gate by
dozens of dogs, many of them sick or injured. On the porch of the ramshackle
farmhouse was a stack of filthy cages, where the decomposing carcass
of a terrier dripped fluids onto a live poodle below.
"Inside,
every downstairs room was piled with excrement-filled cages. Rats scampered
in and out of them. Authorities seized 358 dogs. Many of the females
had mammary tumors and a half-dozen dogs were blind from glaucoma. Nearly
all the adult dogs had severe periodontal disease, and many had to have
teeth removed."
To
the millions of readers of Readers Digest the message on how to
end the despicable puppy mill industry was loud and clear, when the article
went on to state:
"Puppy
mills thrive because the demand for pedigreed dogs has created a highly
profitable market for small farmers and the pet store chains they supply.
Without pet store sales, dog breeding
would not be a lucrative business and most puppy mills would be forced
out of existence."
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