A local news station in Denver, Colorado recently aired a piece about the rescue of ninety dogs from a puppy mill in Missouri – a group called Mill Dog Rescue has set up agreements with many different puppy mill owners to take all of their unwanted dogs.
These are the animals that are injured, deformed, sick, or just too old to be sold to pet stores. Normally, the puppy mill owners will compile this list of dogs that they are intent on destroying and will gladly give Mill Dog Rescue all of these animals instead of killing them. The group has set up these delicate arrangements in the hope of saving all of the dogs that they can, and allowing most, if not all, of the dogs rescued to have a chance at a quality life with a loving family.
This piece showed some of the deplorable conditions that these dogs have lived in their entire lives. By far, the biggest act of cruelty dispensed by these puppy mill owners is to the female dogs that are bred repetitively until they die. The second biggest act of cruelty is the fact that these puppy mill owners do not even give basic care to these dogs. They have no shelter from winter cold or summer heat, they are not fed well, and they do not receive any veterinary care. There are these ‘ugly Yorkie puppies’ that end up in pet stores all over this country.
An ugly Yorkie puppy in this context means uncared for: malnourished, flaky skin, thinning coat on account of allergies brought about by the puppy mill they came from.
Statistics have shown that almost ninety percent of all puppies (Yorkshire Terriers included) sold at pet stores come from puppy mills. Statistics also show that over 2.7 million dogs were killed last year for no other reason than there are too many of them and not enough families to adopt them. Puppy mill owners are breeding multitudes of dogs and then killing the overstock. Does this make any sense to anyone?
There are also other ways to fight this problem: Do not buy a Yorkie puppy or dog from a pet store, but adopt a Yorkie puppy or dog from a shelter instead. If people would stop buying from pet stores, the stores would have no reason to sell puppies, so this would stop puppy mill owners from having a pipeline of income from pet stores that buy Yorkie puppies and dogs.
Sometimes all we can do to solve a problem is to educate ourselves and to make our voices heard. Remember: If lawmakers receive thousands of letters regarding this subject, they will take notice. Please help abolish puppy mills forever.
