Who hasn't walked by a pet shop and adored the cute little puppies in the window? I know many people have, because I worked in a pet shop for more than two years. In fact I even took one of the puppies home with me. But then I learned about the places most pet shop pups come from.
More often than not, puppies sold in pet shops come from puppy mills, where a female is bred for the sole purpose of mass-producing puppies. There, she spends her entire life in a wire cage. Her only function is having puppies in some cases, more births than her frail body can tolerate. When she can no longer have those cute puppies that everyone falls in love with, she is euthanized. .
Puppy mills are also well known for being unsanitary. Many times cages upon cages are stacked on each other, and each animal's waste runs into the cage below. Skin infections are rampant and food is often infested with maggots or shared with rats. These conditions leave the animals subject to many physical and mental diseases. Disturbing behavior often is noted in many puppies from puppy mills due to the total confinement they must endure. In many cases, a common puppy disease such as parvo or diphtheria-- both normally prevented through vaccination, wipes out an entire litter of puppies. Usually there is no veterinarian on site to care for these ailing puppies, who are lucky if there is someone there that actually cares.
When do these puppies get to leave the puppy mill? Most often it is sooner than it should be. Puppy mill operators have been known to fake birth dates on official papers so as to get the puppies to the stores when they are young, small, and more desirable. What is wrong with this? The puppy's immune system is not fully developed and is more vulnerable to illnesses. They are often not able to eat on their own and can starve. .
My job at the pet store was to take care of the puppies as they came in by airplane from Kansas.
