What is a Puppy Mill anyway?

While there is no firm definition of the term "puppy mill", many people use the label for a place where puppies are business and profit, not loving pets and companions. This leaves the term "puppy mill" rather open to interpretation, doesn't it?

Popular usage of the label "Puppy Mill" has it as a large facility, where dogs are crammed into cages, fed little, uncared for, with little or no human contact, and forced to breed heat cycle after heat cycle, while an uncaring owner reaps profits.

In the past few years there have been more and more "busts" and the media has publicized the closing of some of the larger mills. In some of the pictures you see dogs stacked in cages, feces and urine covering those on the bottom rack, sometimes as many as five dogs to a crate made to hold one or two, and crates by the dozen. The dogs themselves are malnourished, terrified creatures who have never heard a kind word or felt a loving hand until their rescue.

If you want to see what a puppy mill looks like, visit "Prisoners for Profit", for an inside look. Guard yourself, these photos are heartbreaking.

I asked our forum members what they thought when they heard the phrase "Puppy Mill". Here are the answers they gave me.

What was interesting to see, was the perception of "Puppy Mill" as not only a dirty, cruel cage facility where hundreds of puppies are born to sick and diseased dogs every year, but also those who keep a couple of dogs and breed them indiscriminately, whenever the heat cycle starts. "Puppy Mills" can be everyone from a mass producer with more than 50 dogs, to the Backyard Breeder who breeds puppies to sell without making sure they are doing it the right way. In short, anybody who breeds dog (or cats) for profit, rather than the breeders who breed to better the breed.

Puppy mills are a serious problem as breeding for profits gains momentum in this day and age. "Anything to make a dollar" has, sadly, become a motto, and the innocent animals are suffering for it. It takes YOU, and you too, to put a stop to this. If this message reaches five people, and those five people in turn educate five other people ... maybe we can put a stop to the horrendous practice practice of puppy mills.