The Backyard is hosting Puppy Mills Awareness Day. There will be a puppy mill survivor parade, children’s activities, vendors, rescue and pet adoptions, food, beverages, and live music.
The line-up includes:
Greezy Wheel, More Cowbell, Big Daddy and Ugly Elephant.
What are puppy mills?
A puppy mill is a commercial breeding operation where puppies are looked upon as dollar $igns instead of living, breathing beings. Dogs are treated like products thrown up onto a shelf and given little to no social interaction or medical care. Unlike responsible breeders, puppy mill operators focus on the output and money. Profit is given priority over the physical and mental comfort and well-being of the dogs in their ‘care’.
Puppy mills typically profit from online sales and large quantity sales to pet shops, often falsifying records and lying about the true lineage of the puppies to produce a higher market value.
Many people purchase ‘high quality’ pure-bred puppies from breeders online and pet shops without knowing the true conditions of these dog factories. Cages stacked upon one another, feces and urine dripping down from the cages above onto the dogs below. Mothers are constantly bred without a break in between litters to keep production moving along. Dogs are confined 24/7 to their cages, which sends many dogs into a catatonic state or they are driven crazy, throwing themselves into the side of the cage seeking a way out of confinement.
The puppies, while some may be lucky to survive and be bought into a life of luxury, suffer as well as the breeder parents. Often times the kennels are housed with little to no protection from mother nature. During the winter-time, puppies can freeze to death and during the summertime, it has been witnessed that puppies will actually cook on the hot wire kennels. It has been noted in many puppy mill raids that the number of carcasses can outnumber the live animals in a facility.
“People who purchase dogs don’t hate dogs! They are buying a puppy because they want to love these animals and bring him or her into their lives. It is up to us, as animal advocates, to educate and raise awareness to stop these purchases, encourage adoption, or at the very least, seek out a responsible breeder.”
President | Pet Alliance of Central Texas.
