Puppy Mills

Many people are unaware of puppy mills. The Humane society has been working for years to stop this cruel practice and raise awareness of it's cruelty and the affects to the dogs.

The question one would ask upon hearing about puppy mills is, "what is a puppy mill and why are they so bad?" To answer that question I met with Janene Baker, an advocate for the Humane Society, and she explained that puppy mills are widely known as "puppy farms," making them seem very innocent and like they would be a good place for dogs to breed.

In these puppy mills the female dogs are forced to breed everytime they are in heat and when the puppies are born they have very little time with they're mother before they are weaned, resulting in poor nutrition and put into a cramped envirement with other dogs. Due to the conditions the puppies are exposed to, they often develope poor socializing skills and temperment issues. As the puppies grow older they often have respitory problems and weak bones in their hips and joints because of the bad transportation to pet shops as puppies.

Many pet shops are unaware that they have recieved they're puppies from puppy mill and the owners of these puppy mills sell them to pet shops to gain the largest profit possible on purebreds. Ways that you can help discourage the business of puppy mills is before you buy a new puppy:
Consider adoption at an animal shelter and not buying from a pet shop.

If choosing to buy from a breeder, see where the puppies have been born and bred.

Make sure that the breeder is more interested about the animals well being and not just selling them to you.

Let others know about the cruelty and affects of puppy mills.

There is power in numbers and no animal derserves to be treated with cruely. The Humane Society appreciates the help of those who care about animals and they're rights to good homes and a healthy, happy life.

My next article: Puppy mills

For my next column I have been inspired to write about puppy mills. Not to many people know what goes on in puppy mills or that they even exist. I am going to be writing this article to bring an awareness of these organizations and the health effects the dogs obtain.

Picture courtesy of Cheezylu's

The blog thing of this week....

So....yesterday was Easter Sunday. It was nice in side but rainy and windy outside. I woke up at around 10 a.m. which is strange because I was awake till four in the morning taking care of the drunkin group of friends at my house that night.....who thought it would be the coolest thing just to stay up all night and be really loud and attempt to exicute the moon walk for no apparent reason but to say that is what they did with their weekend. Anyways, I woke up at this time and was happy that eveyone had left and I would have a nice quiet Easter Sunday.
I got up and threw on some clothes, that didn't make me look like I had just rolled out of bed, and I went to Safeway to get some eggs and a color kit to dye eggs. To my surprise, there were no kits left; so I decided to go to Target......it was closed.....closed? So I decided to go to the Shop'n Cart. I figured that there weren't enough people to even shop in the run down store so there had to be color kits there. Sadly I was wrong.
I asked the woman at the counter if there were any color kits left and she just shook her head and told me to go to Walgreen's. Tired and ready to give up on my childhood tradition, I drove across town and strolled in to the Walgreens. I followed the aisles of candy that would soon be discounted and forgotten all the way to the egg coloring kits. There they were! Yes!
I grabbed the only one I could see wasn't made by Disney and headed for the egg aisle.
With my kit and my eggs I walked up to the counter and purchased my items. It surprised me when the woman said that I was lucky that the store hadn't cut the budget like the other stores.
Wow, budget cuts on childhood memories.