“Madonna of the Mills” on HBO: The Fight Against Puppy Mills

March 21, 2011

If you’re knowledgeable about dogs you already know the horror of the Pennsylvania puppy mills that breed stock for pet stores that place profit above all else. If you’re not aware of the deplorable conditions that these dogs are forced to endure, you should make it a point to see the new documentary,  Madonna of the Mills.

A Staten Island woman named Laura Flynn-Amato is the subject of this documentary. She’s just an ordinary dog owner who fell in love with a yellow Lab puppy in a pet store in a mall, bought him and brought him home. Shortly after that the seizures began.

It was while looking for answers to the health problems of her new dog that Laura learned about the puppy mills in Lancaster, PA. Determined to change things, this discovery led Mrs. Flynn-Amato to rescue almost 4,000 dogs over the past five years. Pretty impressive, by my lights.

Photo by Jan Somma-Hammel/Staten Island Advance

Here’s the take-away about puppy mills:

10 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT PUPPY MILLS

  1. 99% of puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills.
  2. Nearly 100% of all puppies in pet stores have parasites when they are purchased.
  3. 48% of puppies being sold in pet stores were ill or incubating an illness at the time of purchase, according to a recent California study.
  4. 500,000 puppies are born in puppy mills and sold in pet stores every
    year in the United States.
  5. There are 35,000 pet stores in America
  6. Puppy millers can make more than $300,000 growing puppies every year.
  7. Puppy mills have been around since the early 1960s.
  8. Almost every puppy sold in a pet store has a mother who will spend her entire life in a tiny cage, never being petted, never being walked, never being treated like a dog.
  9. Female dogs are usually bred 2x a year. At that rate, they usually burn out by age 5, at which time they are put to death.
  10. About 1 million breeder dogs are confined in puppy mills throughout the country.

 

Posted by admin | Filed Under Canine 

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