Now the Internet is overflowing with puppy mill sales
By Carole Raphaelle Davis
“I’m so excited!” my friend Kevin wrote on his Facebook profile. “My Bulldog puppy arrives this weekend!”
Kevin wanted the world to know how proud he was to add some puppy love to his family. For me it was a signal to start yet anotherinvestigation into the underworld of Internet puppy mill sales. I posted a comment to a thousand virtual friends at once.
“Congratulations,” I wrote. “You just bought a puppy mill dog.” As the animal protection movement wages its battle against the maltreatment of dogs in puppy mills, it faces a powerful new enemy - the Internet Pet Store. The Internet, as helpful as it has been for rescuing animals with sites like AdoptAPet.com, has become a perfect stealth shield for abusers of animals looking to make a buck. A Google search for information on dog breeds will lead any gullible browser to tens of thousands of online breeders. For the buyer in a hurry, there are Web portals to make shopping easy, like NextDayPets.com, which unite hundreds of dog dealers on one site. With a click, you can pay to have a pup mailed to you in a crate. Though it’s a convenient way to buy a dog, you might be inadvertently contributing to animal abuse.
Deborah Howard, president of the Companion Animal Protection puppy dealers. “One should never, ever buy a dog on the Internet because you’re not seeing the conditions under which the puppy is being raised,” she said. “There are no good ones because reputable reeders don’t sell puppies this way.” “The HSUS receives hundreds of complaints about sick and dying puppies sold over the Internet,” says Kathleen Summers, Deputy Director of the puppy mill campaign of The Humane Society of the United States. “In fact, several of the puppy mills that the HSUS has helped close down recently were Internet sellers, including a mill in Tennessee with almost 700 dogs and a millin West Virginia with almost 900 dogs. Both of these facilities posed online as small family breeders.”
The mill Ms. Summers referred to in Tennessee was called Pinebluff Puppies. Like most Internet dog dealers, they had a Web site with pretty pictures of puppies. When the mill was raided, the real picture wasn’t so pretty. Cherie Wachter, a spokeswoman for a Fort Lauderdale, Florida Humane Society involved in the rescue, said her team brought back 130 of the dogs. She said that they were found in horrible living conditions.
“A couple of them were stuck together by matted hair,” she said. “All of the dogs were living in cages, which were stacked on top of each other. Some of the dogs in the lower cages were covered in feces from the animals above.” According to a report about Pinebluff Puppies on PetAbuse.com, “Many of them were without water and living in cages covered in feces. Some of the dogs were dead.”
CAPS offers an online complaint form for distraught Internet buyers. Here is one of the many complaints she sent me: “Emaciated upon receiving at airport, fecal tests showed hookworms and severe giardia infection so bad vet stated ‘this dog shouldn't be alive.’ Three days after having the puppy, he got sick and then spent seven days at an emergency animal hospital in an oxygen unit; $7,000 later, we have to nebulize the dog every six hours and he is mostly lethargic. What keeps us going is that he has bursts of energy and wants to play. We keep hoping that he'll kick whatever he has, but it has been emotionally and financially draining.”
Victims of consumer fraud who have bought sick and dying dogs over the Internet find it’s no picnic fighting back. Deborah Howard recounted the case of a woman who bought her dog online. “She went to the airport to pick up her dog and there was a crate on the baggage conveyer. People were pointing and staring at it and it was her puppy,” Deborah said. “It arrived dead.”
She continued, “A lot of them arrive sick with Parvo, worms, Giardia, coccidia, kennel cough or pneumonia. It’s even more dangerous than buying in a pet shop because legal recourses are more challenging. You have to file a complaint with the Attorney General’s office in the state of the breeder and if you want to sue the seller, you have to go to small claims court in their state, not yours. These Internet sellers know this.”
Many of the sites linked to substandard breeding operations will say anything to deceive buyers into believing the business is ethical or humane. They often describe themselves as “Christian” and “familyrun.” A common lie is that their dogs are “raised in the home.”
One Internet seller I investigated is posting dozens of ads with pictures of miniature dogs with bows in their fur. The ads lead to a flashy Web site that shows pictures of B-list celebrities who have bought dogs from them. In bold font, it claims, “Happy puppies come from a happy family and go to happy families.” It is such an outrageous distortion of the truth that it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The dealer is selling the puppies out of a house, yes, but the house is not where the puppies are from. The dealer has been linked to an illegal shipment of dogs from a puppy mill in Korea. Lieutenant Boswell, field supervisor for Los Angeles Animal Services told me that the shipment was intercepted by customs authorities in L.A. and all the dogs were under-aged; some arrived dead, the live ones were very sick and all had falsified documents. The dealer is so shameless, he even sells the dogs for what he calls an “adoption fee” … of $2,200.
By digging around, you can sometimes find the same contact number or kennel address for several different Web sites, each one “specializing” in a particular breed. The trickery is astounding. You can find the same phone number for, say, 10 different breed-specific Web sites that offer available litters at all times. It would be physically impossible to have that many dogs “home raised.”
One mill I investigated had a Web site with pictures of “Tea Cup” Yorkies. The site was designed to look like “the ranch” is run by a young woman who loves puppies and raises them in her house. The Web site was actually the fabrication an older Korean man who had 400 dogs roasting in the sun, diseased and neglected just outside of Los Angeles.
It’s time for some healthy skepticism. Do what shoppers are uncomfortable doing for fear of seeming rude. Call the number on the Web site and ask how many dogs they have in their breeding stock. Ask how many times they breed their bitches before they retire them and what they do with their used stock when they’re done producing. Ask who their veterinarian is. Ask for the number of their USDA license and a copy of their last inspection. Ask if they sell to pet shops, brokers or research laboratories. Ask which brokers and which pet stores. Ask if they have had any returns of sick dogs. Ask them how many dogs they sell per year. Ask how they exercise and socialize theirbreeding stock and how many times per week.
Now, the seller might lie to you, and they often do. But if you don’t ask these questions and get provable answers, you won’t know what you’re buying. I guarantee that if they’re hiding something, they’ll hang up on you. But a reputable breeder will welcome these legitimate questions. Remember that any breeder willing to mail a puppy in a crate to a stranger, does not care about dogs. Any decent veterinarian will tell you that an eight-week old puppy needs to have water and food every two hours. He should not be left alone in cargo, in the cold or the heat, sitting on the tarmac like luggage. There are often several hours of layovers between flights. It’s dangerous. But because we are talking about dogs, somehow, we’re not supposed to empathize. It’s justa dog.
The HSUS is bringing forth “Baby’s Bill,” named after the puppy mill survivor adopted by author Jana Kohl. It will close the loophole in the Animal Welfare Act which exempts “direct” Internet sellers from federal regulation. The bill requires breeders who sell more than 50 puppies a year to be licensed and regularly inspected. Thankfully, after talking with me, my friend Kevin cancelled his order from the Bulldog Web site and has pledged to adopt a Bulldog from a rescue organization. I’m going to help him find true doggy love online… at AdoptAPet.com.
Carole Raphaelle Davis is an animal welfare advocate and author of The Diary of Jinky, Dog of a Hollywood Wife. Visit her Web site at: www.hollywoodjinky.com.
