If you purchased your dog from a pet store, there's a strong likelihood that your pup came from a puppy mill. Puppy mills are large-scale dog breeding facilities; they typically put profit over the welfare of the dogs, resulting in sickness, early deaths, and lives without love or care for our furry friends. Millions of dogs are bred in puppy mills while millions of shelter dogs are euthanized each year (x).

There are an estimated 10,000 puppy mills, both registered and unregistered, in the United States (x). Unsanitary living conditions, around the clock confinement in cramped, uncomfortable cages, and little to no recovery time between breeding cycles result in miserable lives for dogs in puppy mills. They spend their lives with inadequate veterinary care and a lack of food, water, and socialization.

Dogs are kept in small wire cages, often stacked on top of one another. Urine and fecal matter cakes the cages, and often drips onto the dogs below, before forming a layer that provides the only solid surface for dogs to lay on (x). Excrement embeds itself into the matted fur of the dogs, which is often so overgrown that emaciated dogs appear to be healthy sizes. Uncut nails often get caught in the wire cages and eventually grow back into the paws, causing pain and sometimes life-threatening infections. Dogs suffering from illnesses and infections are never visited by veterinarians. Bugs and rodents run rampantly throughout the facilities-- taunting the dogs with a freedom they may never know.

Callous breeders often see these dogs as nothing more than "crops" or "inventory." The Kennel Club recommends at least a year between litters, but puppy mills force female dogs through repeated cycles of pregnancy, typically twice a year, every year, until she can no longer produce. There is a current legal limit of six litters per bitch (a limit by which these breeders do not abide), but "the vast majority of responsible breeders feel that this is too high" and dangerously impacts a dog's well-being (x). Once the mothers have been forced to carry so many litters that they are no longer able to breed (usually at five to seven years of age), puppy mill owners will kill them by "starving, drowning, shooting, beating, or burying the dogs alive" (x).

Puppies, meanwhile, are stripped away from their mothers at extremely early ages, and sent to pet stores, often times carrying diseases and infections such as upper respiratory infections, kennel cough, pneumonia, fleas, kidney and heart disease and intestinal parasites (x). Lack of socialization as puppies often results in increased levels of anxiety, aggression, and fear in these dogs. These dogs often have shorter lifespans due to their upbringings. These puppies appear to be healthy when they're sold in shops, but in many cases, once these puppies are brought home their owners discover an array of health problems. In one heartbreaking story, a family purchased a puppy from a breeder they found online, and just three days later they discovered that their new puppy was suffering from parvovirus . In less than a week, the family had to put the puppy down. Nicola Bromley, the senior veterinary clinician at the veterinary clinic that treated the puppy, said that "thousands of happy looking pups just like this one are bred in horrific conditions e.g. puppy farms, then transported cross country to these puppy sellers or ‘dealers’ and sold every day." These puppies are already carrying viruses such as parvovirus, "which usually manifests itself a few days after settling into their new home when any natural immunity provided by their mother’s milk has worn off" (x). As Vet Nicola advises any families looking for a new puppy to do their research. Many pet stores claim to get their puppies from "licensed USDA breeders" or "local breeders." While this statement may be technically true, it provides a false sense of security for buyers. A puppy's parents both simply need to have papers in order for the puppy to be registered, and "the truth is that "many registered dogs, as well as pedigreed dogs, are sold in puppy mills" (x).

Before purchasing a puppy, you should always ask to see the mother. Puppies from pet stores or online are usually from victims of puppy mills, and are often disease or infection ridden, yet are preferred over shelter dogs simply because they are puppies. While this isn't the case for all pet store dogs, it is unfortunately the case for many. All dogs deserve to be loved and taken care of, but to remain ignorant to where these puppies are coming and to continue to purchase from pet stores and unreputable breeders is to be an enabler of puppy mills.

If laws aren't made to protect the lives of our furry friends, customers must take the matter into their own hands. To put it in simple economic terms, puppy mills will continue to flourish as long as the demand remains high for pet store puppies.