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To puppy mill investigators, the idea that commercial breeders are treating their dogs well or socializing them is laughable. A miller's idea of playtime is to throw a bunch of females in heat with a male in one cage. As for being responsibly placed, mass volume breeders use brokers to ship barely weaned (and often sick) pups indiscriminately to pet retailers around the country. The dogs are crated in trucks for thousands of miles at an age when they need food and water every two hours. They are also sent in crates to buyers across the country on long flights with layovers. Transporting eight-week old dogs that way isn't safe, and according to Lewis Turner, owner of the Petcare Company in California, four out of ten dogs that were trucked in to him by brokers Lambriar and Hunte were sick, "with green liquid coming from their eyes or nose." Hardly "responsible placement" by any standard. I asked Strand, "When is a breeding operation too big? Five hundred? A thousand? How can you treat a thousand dogs well? " Unwilling to discuss ratios of employees to dogs, she answered, "They have staff." Andrew Rosenthal, who owns L.A. Dogworks, a dog day care center in Los Angeles, told me he employs one staff member for every ten dogs. That's what it takes, he says, to keep them "safe and happy." But the typical mill has hundreds of miserable dogs in cages and one guy with a hose. I've seen it during an investigation - I'll never forget it - one toothless guy, diddling in the shade, ignoring 450 whimpering dogs in cages. The dogs were roasting in the sun without access to shade. It was over a hundred degrees and I saw dogs with wounds, dogs with eyes crusted shut, and dogs with their inner organs coming out of their genital area from having had so many litters. One dog had been stitched up with rope. In her earnest effort to protect animal enterprises, Strand seems willfully blind to similar evidence from undercover footage of mills all over the U.S. - evidence demonstrating that cruelty is the norm, not the exception. "Whenever there's a bad kennel bust, we always pray it's not one of ours," Strand says. "Absurd laws are being passed all over the country for the purpose of fundraising," Strand adds. "The HSUS has millions backing these bills and the public doesn't realize that the HSUS is not a humane society but a giant fundraising machine"¦We'd rather do things for animals than having to fight these lunatics"¦ They're operating with dishonest means full time!" said Strand. "That's a broad allegation," retorts HSUS' Michael Markarian. "Unlike NAIA, the HSUS does have actual animal protection programs. We do disaster relief for animals, we provide vet care for animals, we run five of our own animal sanctuaries and we work with law enforcement to stop dogfights, puppy mills, and other large-scale cruelties. In 2008, we directly handled or cared for more than 70,000 animals." Strand does make the valid objection to "cap legislation" that you can mistreat five dogs in a small kennel and treat 51 dogs well, so penalizing a "good breeder" who owns 51 dogs doesn't help dogs being abused in a 49-dog operation. The war between animal enterprises and animal welfare is becoming increasingly vitriolic. Strand attempts to clear up an alleged mix-up on who the good guys and bad guys are. "The good news is that the bad guys have gotten so blatantly bad that the general public is beginning to recognize [HSUS] for who they are and not being confused about thinking that they're a humane society." Markarian disagrees. He thinks the bad guys are abusing dogs and the HSUS is going after them. "The NAIA was the main opponent to the new law that passed in Patti's home state of Oregon- a law to restrict abusive mills that requires exercise and a cap of 50," said Michael. "They want no limits on what people can do to these animals. They are not winning the hearts and minds of people who care about animals. It's a very modest advance and the NAIA is its main opponent. " Bill Hemby runs PETPAC (Protecting the Rights of Pets and Owners), a lobbying organization that he claims has 65,000 members. "We're fighting for our lives," Hemby told me. "This is a national fight. There is a concerted effort to eliminate our pets!" He believes that "AR wackos, if they're successful, will mean the end of pet ownership." Of the bills, he states, "fifty-dog caps are just subterfuges. The real aim is to criminalize selling dogs and establishing a cap on dog ownership." Yet, this man, who shares his bed with Borzois (including two rescued Borzois) had the uprightness to admit that anyone "with an excess of one hundred or two hundred dogs would have a difficult time keeping that number of animals." He agreed, "Fifty is a good number." Hemby, who coined the term, "the pet extinction act" (after a spay/neuter bill), told me he knew very few breeders who support puppy farms or selling to pet shops. He also took a well-aimed shot at Strand and the AKC. "Puppy farms register a lot of dogs. The AKC The skirmish is intensifying with an incendiary NAIA billboard campaign to "Expose Animal Rights!" with a hundred billboards up in California and a plan to expand across the nation. The campaign, called "anemic" by HSUS's Markarian, links the AR movement to terrorist activities. Judie Mancuso, animal protection advocate and president of Social Compassion in Legislation, has been the target of a hate campaign with cartoons depicting her as a witch. She told me she is astounded by "the lie that we're this extremist bunch who are out to eliminate dogs, that we want to ban breeding so we can eliminate them from the planet. They're delusional!" About the convenient argument by breeders that pet overpopulation is a myth, Mancuso responds, "It makes me want to fight harder. I think of the dead animals that I've seen in fifty gallon barrels and stacked in freezers and euthanasia rooms." Mancuso isn't afraid to take on the AKC. "I've looked at their tax forms. They didn't spend millions cleaning up puppy mills ;they spent millions on top salaries of top executives. Patti Strand works for puppy mills and fur farmers. The only thing they spend millions on is salaries and employee benefits." Stephan Otto, director of legislative affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, is adamant about the need for legislation. "I have zero trust in self-regulation by the animal industry," he says. "They're not in business for the welfare of animals; they're in business to make money." Some commercial breeders are fomenting paranoia, arming themselves for violence, as this breeder on a Yahoo meet-up group makes clear: "Every breeder I know is armed to the teeth"¦Hot lead is a good motivator even for the most sincere AR wacko. In addition we also have 32 observation cameras on the property and every second of every day is taped. At night all cameras are night vision and we have lots of motion sensor lights that come on." One wonders what this breeder is hiding behind all those cameras and guns. His homestead sounds disturbingly similar to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, but with dogs. Bill Smith, president of Mainline Animal Rescue, knows all about what goes on inside commercial breeding facilities. "Odd that the industry promotes their puppies as family companions, living inside and sleeping in a child's bed, but has no problem with the practice of keeping the puppies' mothers in outside rabbit hutches or stacked in unheated barns," Smith says. "The day a breeding dog is born in a puppy mill, she is placed in her coffin"”a box only slightly longer than her body. Then she dies eight or nine years later. Many Amish breeders in Pennsylvania debark their breeding dogs by damaging their vocal chords with pipes or sharp objects. They don't want their neighbors to know that they have eight hundred breeding dogs in their barns. We have rescued dogs in the greatest of physical pain and they could not cry out because the breeders had robbed them of their voices." As the war in the legislature pushes on, there is an easy solution that would put puppy mills out of business - a simple solution that can be achieved by the public: Stop buying dogs. There are millions of wonderful dogs dying in the shelters. Adopt one. For more information:
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