[A]bhorrent conditions are common. Animals are more often sick and congenitally diseased than not. Puppy mill origins are the norm. And still there’s a seemingly bottomless font of willing buyers prepared to pay up for the right to buy what very well might be a purebred disaster sourced from a disreputable establishment where abusive farming practices are the norm.

Every retail pet shop I’ve ever visited (and I’ve made it a point to visit a great many) has always disputed all the above points. In the face of sniffles and severe congenital ailments alike, pet shops have patently denied the defects, pointed to certificates, cited “championship bloodlines” and —— most egregiously —— often ignored my requests that they water their “widgets.”

And hey … these are the “cleaned-up” pups for public display! You wanna see real hell? Visit the puppy-mills themselves, where the parents of the “merchandise” spend their entire lives in misery. Oh, sorry …you can’t.

You’re not “rescuing” when you buy a puppy-mill dog from a pet store or Internet site: You’re perpetuating a cycle of mind-numbing cruelty. And don’t think you’ll do better by buying a “hybrid” — a Puggle, Maltipoo, whatever — from these outfits, because you won’t.

Don’t buy so much as a flea comb from these places. Just walk on by.

And if you do step in, be sure you understand what they’re telling you, and what it means. Dr. Patty explains it all. And then walk on out.

Adopt a pet or buy from a reputable breeder. Here are some tips.

A $4.8 million default judgment awarded to former customers of a now-closed Bel Air pet store should help deter similar businesses from selling sick animals from puppy mills, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Tuesday.

A lawsuit against Pets of Bel Air — where customers reportedly included such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Demi Moore and Denise Richards — was filed in December 2007 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It alleged the store sold puppies that later became sick or died because they were bred in so-called puppy mills.

The complaint alleged Pets of Bel Air “sold … puppies for a premium price and thereby duped California consumers out of millions of dollars.”

Judge John P. Shook approved the default judgment last Wednesday after the defendants ignored court orders to turn over business documents to the plaintiffs and respond to motions in the case.

Here’s the rest.

My late gram used to say if you have a good vocabulary, you don’t need to have a potty mouth. I say, call a shitty little dog a shitty little dog, and Bridget does. Now that’s communicating!

Bridget knows how to stop them from being that way, and she does a nice job of sharing. I’d embed the video, but it blows apart our page. So go check it out.

Picking up on some things we dropped …

Thanks to Omidog! for noting that the Ohio firefighter who shot his dogs rather than pay to board them while he was on vacation got 90 days and lost his job.  Thanks to the fire chief for recommending his termination.  … Shirley at YesBiscuit! righteously rips into a shelter that takes a nice found dog in the front door and takes him out the back soon after in a body bag – and then tells the grieving owner of the lost dog that the animal was vicious. The owner is suing. … For the Love of Dog posts about an Indiana police chief who shot a charging dog, except, well, the witnesses tell a different tale about the dog’s demeanor.

Notable posts: …

Nathan Winograd on raising the bar for fight-bust dogs. … Terrierman writes on dwarfism in dogs … Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly (who orders yummy pizzas when you’re talking to her on the phone 3,000 miles away, not fair!) on, well, just everything. She’s having a rough stretch, but it makes for some very thoughtful reading. Dolittler, go.  … SmartDogs on fighting puppy-mills by targeting the buyers of their OTHER products, such as organic milk. … BADRAP has put all its Greatest Hits and handouts in one place. … Got more? Kick a link into the comments.

Year after year, a huge round of applause would sweep Madison Square Garden following a  single statement from Mr. Caras:

“Not one of these dogs of these dogs,”  Roger Caras would intone,”came from a pet store.”

These days, a sizable contingent of the dog-show world wouldn’t be cheering; they’d be booing him as an “animal-rights dupe” — or worse.  That is, if he were even allowed to say anything negative at all  about pet stores.

After all, the American Kennel Club — which sanctions dog shows, including Westminster — has repeatedly tried to get the ethical breeders that make up its member clubs to accept that they need to embrace the easy registration dollars of puppy-milling scum to underwrite the costs of putting on dog shows and other competitive events. Their efforts have been largely unsuccessful, which is one reason why puppy-millers made up their own registries — and why they have jumped on the mixed-breed bandwagon, pumping Puggles galore into pet stores.

Which is not to say that all otherwise good breeders hate it when the AKC runs after the puppy-mill money. Bolstered by anger and mostly, by fear, these breeders have convinced themselves that defending high-volume breeders is the only way to protect their own dogs in the long run. And they’re so deep into their own paranoia they even deny that puppy-mills exist at all.

I knew this, of course, but I didn’t know quite how angry the spittle-spewing defenders of keeping dogs as factory-farmed livestock were until I did something pretty normal for me: I mentioned a week ago (on Twitter) that I was going to a puppy-mill protest.

Now, I knew that this would generate a fair amount of outrage, since the monthly picketing is organized by Jennifer Fearing  of the Humane Society of the United States.  And immediately, the Tweets jumped back at me, mostly bashing the “H$U$” (as the folks who always write “H$U$ and PETA” together as if they were one) always type it. One of the Tweeters even cautioned me to look both ways crossing the street.

But, hey, I expected that (well, aside from the death threat — that was just a bonus). After all, there are people who get a vein throbbing on their forehead when any number of groups are mentioned, from the HSUS to the NRA to the Sierra Club to Ducks Unlimited. (You might be surprised to know which two of the four I am a member of, although those who know I take my working retrievers out to actually work now and then will probably guess right.)

But after the first round of knee-jerk reactions, I was moderately surprised to see people tweeting that:

• The term “puppy-mill” was made up by PETA (nope, it pre-dated the founding of that group, and has been around for almost as long as I have, in the neighborhood of half a century).
• The HSUS makes up all the things it says about puppy mills, and stages the pictures. (Um, no, I can in half a day find former legislative investigators and independent journalists who have seen the worst,  on site, and reported on it for more than 40 years.)
• Some breeds would rather live in kennels. (Even if you grant that’s true — a stretch for the most social of domestic animals  — why are they then being bred in high volume for pets, knowing that most people keep their dogs in the house?)

And most egregrious:

• A puppy raised in a high-volume commercial kennel is as good a pet prospect as one raised in a home that provides genetic screening, proper socialization (both intentional through handling and visits and environmental through taking in the sights, sounds and smells of living with people), early training and a mother unstressed by the din and smell of spending an entire life in a cage.
• Dogs from high-volume operations are “necessary” because everyone doesn’t want a “show dog.” (I hardly know where to start: While commercial kennels are all about the profit — and nothing else — almost all ethical breeders work from the idea that every puppy born will need to be a healthy family pet before that dog will be anything else, be it an agility champion, a show champion or a companion hunting dog.  Breeding dogs for dough only works if you’re cutting out everything that defines  a good breeder, including serving as a lifelong reference for your puppy-buyers and always being there to take a dog you bred back, no matter what.  Good breeders don’t cut corners; commercial ones must to make a buck.

I  agree with the HSUS — and indeed any person with a heart — that filthy, high-volume breeding operations are inhumane. And I believe strongly that even cleaned-up high-volume operations are  not conducive to everything we know about how a dog becomes a healthy, well-adjusted pet. As long as an industry for the “manufacture” of family pets is overseen by the U.S. Department of AGRICULTURE, that’s pretty much all you need to know about why high-volume kennels and their retailing and Internet fronts are not a good choice when you’re looking for a puppy. (Not to mention: What about dogs used as breeding stock for life? Don’t they deserve the life of a family pet?)

That said,  I would actually prefer that we end high-volume breeding operations by starving them of business, because legislative answers too often seem to aim at the wrong targets. Not to mention legislators are often misguided by those  people who hate breeders so much that they don’t see a difference between ethical ones and puppy-millers, or by those who are so deep in animal-rights philosophy that they are really pushing the PETA agenda of no domesticated animals at all.

By the way, there IS a difference between HSUS and PETA, and that agenda is it.

With puppy-mills, real change will come only when everyone knows what’s behind those cute puppies in the pet-store window or on the pictures on an Internet site.

Laws don’t work as well as changing attitudes do.

We need to help people realize that the only sensible and ethical options are to get a pet from a shelter or rescue group, or from a  breeder who raises puppies in the home with all the proven advantages of constant socialization and early training.

As Christie says, “Get a family pet from a family home,” and that pretty much rules out any commercial operation, even the cleaned up high-volume production facilities that get pointed out as “models” from time to time. It even points out the importance of shelters developing strong foster programs to get their animals the socialization and training they need to improve their chances of making it into a forever home.

The day high-volume commercial breeding ends is the day when every pet lover is to ashamed to admit a  puppy came from a pet store. And judging from the honks of support vs. rude gestures I saw at the picketing  (a couple dozen honks in support vs. one “Get a life!”), that day isn’t too far off.

As for why I’m standing with the HSUS — a group I have sharply disagreed with on other issues — it’s simple:  I need to stand up against everything that’s wrong about puppy mills, and everything that’s right about good breeders.

I refuse to sell out animals who need me, and potential pet-owners who deserve better than the sick, unsocialized and difficult to train animals who come from high-volume operations. I also refuse to sell out good breeders, which is why I politely turned down a sign that read, “Adopt, don’t buy” because I think buying a puppy from a reputable, compassionate breeder is an ethical, intelligent option.

It’s long past time to find the common ground and work together. A first step would be for animal advocates to understand that all breeders aren’t the same, and for breeders to drop the “with us or agin’ us” attitude that makes it easy for the breeding ban people to lump the ethical in with the cruel.

And if your HSUS hate is so strong that you would rather be on the wrong side of this issue, well,  shame on you.

Now, here’s the picture. I’m on the left, with Jennifer Fearing of the HSUS. I may well be the first puppy-mill protester who has also been to Crufts and Westminster, but I shouldn’t be the last:

On Monday, notorious Florida-based puppy retailer Wizard of Claws filed for bankruptcy, resulting in the shuttering of the store and the seizure by the bankruptcy trustee of the store’s remaining puppy inventory. When The Humane Society of the United States learned the bankruptcy trustee intended to auction off the remaining puppies housed at the store, an anonymous donor stepped in to sponsor the dogs, and The HSUS brokered a deal to have all 32 dogs placed for adoption into loving, permanent homes.

The closure comes on the heels of a recent ruling by a Broward County judge refusing to dismiss a major class action lawsuit filed by Humane Society of the United States members and other individuals against Wizard of Claws for selling sick and dying puppies through its retail pet store and over the Internet to hundreds of unsuspecting consumers.

The 32 puppies seized by the bankruptcy trustee will be transferred to the custody of The HSUS and the Broward County Humane Society today. The dogs, which include Yorkies, Chihuahuas, Maltese, Pomeranians, Dachshunds, and Shih-tzus, will each be given evaluations and medical inspections as well as any needed veterinary treatment before being offered for adoption.

Here’s the rest. Lucky for those puppies, but not for their parents, and all the other still trapped in cruel puppy mills. How to stop this: Don’t buy from a pet store or an Internet site that offers lots of different breeds or mixes. Adopt from a shelter or rescue group, or buy from a reputable, compassionate breeder.

Get your pets from a shelter, rescue group or a compassionate, reputable and ethical  breeder. Or this — dogs spending their lives in a shopping cart — is on your soul.

Already have a pet? I won’t buy so much as a pet toy from a puppy mill retail outlet, and I encourage you to do the same.

This only ends when WE end it. Everyone who bought a puppy  that came from this miller kept these dogs living in a shopping cart.

The first wrong was the piece itself, which was pulled down after the HSUS cried foul over the contents. This triggered an Internet game of whack-a-mole, as the piece popped up seemingly everywhere, and when that seemed to abate, the transcript was floated around instead.

Mainly, the piece claimed the HSUS raised money under false pretenses, giving the impression that the advocacy group claims direct responsibility for shelter operations, which it does not and does not claim to. But that wasn’t good enough for the TV station, which reported:

Critics tell Channel 2 Action News reporter Amanda Rosseter that this isn’t just consumers misunderstanding who they are giving in to – but an organization actively misleading donors to get money.

“They do their marketing very well, that’s for sure,” said Trey Burley of PAWS Atlanta.

Critics say the national organization takes advantage of people who think they are giving to local shelters. DeKalb’s “PAWS” shelter says there is no regular funding help from the $100 million HSUS budget.

“I think that some of the folks who donate to the national organization may be under the false pretense that that money is going to a local cause,” said Burley.

This isn’t news. In fact, there’s a section in my book “Dogs For Dummies” (1994) that discusses the importance of direct donations to local shelters and rescue groups. When you give to the HSUS, you’re providing mostly for animal advocacy, lobbying for animal laws and investigations. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

Without even creasing my brow I can think of a dozen non-animal-related organizations that do the same. Lobbying, after all, is a stand-alone business, and I doubt many of the professional lobbyists in Washington or Sacramento spend much of their time involved with the management of the industry groups  or social interests they represent. (Pulitzer prize-winning reporter John Woestendiek of the OhMiDog blog takes apart the TV piece, here.)

What happened next was perhaps politically predictable but still sleazy: An effort to raise money for anti-forced spay-neuter lobbying efforts,  suggesting that the HSUS was not correcting the record but burying the truth by demanding the TV piece be pulled down.

The perpetrator? PetPac, which has been a tireless fighter against forced spay-neuter laws and the drive by spittle-spewing animal-rights haters to push reputable, ethical breeders into extinction through laws not only opposed  by reputable  breeders but also contrary to policy statements of  the ASPCA and the AVMA. The opposition to forced spay-neuter knows that this kind of legislation is racist and classist, kills more pets than it saves and inserts the government into a medical decision that’s not without negative consequences and that should be left to a pet’s owner, with advice from a veterinarian.

PetPac led the fight against the draconian AB 1634 last year in California, and is working against SB 250 this year. The latter was brought forward by the same folks behind the last bill, especially Judie Mancuso, who insists that all breeders are the same, and all are evil “greeders.”

The HSUS hasn’t taken a position on SB 250, please note. But that didn’t stop PetPac from smearing them anyway, to throw red meat to the rabid HSUS-haters among its own supporters.

In a series of e-mails to suporters (which includes me, by the way)  PetPac’s Bill Hemby questions the motives of HSUS in having the TV piece pulled down, suggesting some nefarious plot to bully the station into hiding the “truth.”

Mr. Hemby knows better. He’s decent guy and a reputable, compassionate and ethical breeder — I first talked to him when trying to find the owners of a pair of lost Borzoi who wandered down my street a few years ago.  But he has been around long enough to know that when a media organization has really got a tiger by the tail, they don’t back down, and sabre-rattling by the group that they’ve reported on is a badge of honor.

Pure politics, this spin, playing to the red state/blue state divide of pets, mortars fired across the scarred battlefield between two entrenched positions. Playing to and scaring the choirs, and it’s done all the time, by all kinds of special-interest groups on all sides of every imaginable issue.

But this sort of behavior, from the extremists in camps that often seem to hate each other more than they care about animals, is counter-productive.

I’ve called the HSUS out on many of their positions, especially with regards to forced spay-neuter (which they have in the past at least tacitly supported) and with what should be done with fight-bust dogs. I ripped them for raising money on the backs of the Vick dogs while their “experts” said the dogs all be destroyed as unredeemable (unredeemable, like Hector here). Not cool, nor is their current deal with Michael Vick himself.

But I believe that for reasons largely driven by changing internal ideology and partly driven by the continued need to tap the zeitgeist so as to keep on tapping wallets for donations, the HSUS is evolving on many of their positions. They’ve embraced trap, neuter and release of managed feral cat colonies, a 180-degree turn from a past position. They have a guide to choosing a reputable breeder that I honestly couldn’t have written much better myself. And they’re spot-on that concentrated animal feeding operations are cruel as well as environmentally unsustainable and a risk to our national health and security. Cheap eggs aren’t worth those kind of risks, folks, cruelty aside.

The agriculture and food industries doesn’t much like that last bit, which is why they have  outfits like the Center For Consumer Freedom out there attacking animal advocacy-groups and scaring the bejeebers out of many good breeders who are now convinced that if they don’t side with puppy-milling scum, they’ll be next to go — a point with some merit, if the Mancusos of the world have their way. (Just to show how complicated this all can get, the CCF has done spectacular work documenting through public records the shameful practices at PETA with regard to their handling of homeless pets in their “shelter.”)

I live on both sides of the great divide, and it’s my job to talk to people on both sides as well.

It’s long past time for the reasonable, animal-loving people of the world to quit allowing the 10 percent of nutjob true believers on the extremes of these issues to dictate the terms of engagement.

For all his good work, Bill Hemby was wrong in calling out the HSUS on this politically motivated crap, just as Judie Mancuso is wrong in lumping the work of compassionate, ethical and responsible breeders in with the careless, clueless breeders or with puppy-milling scum. I hasten to say, though, that it was Hemby’s first mistep, while Mancusco is the ATM of extremism, spitting out hate along with long-discredited ”facts”  whenever anyone punches her buttons.

I will be on the side of PetPac when SB 250, the new Pet Extinction Act, comes to a floor vote in the California State Senate. And I am on the side of HSUS when it comes to investigations and legislation against puppy-milling scum. I am not one of those breeders who defends puppy-millers because of the slippery-slope argument: I believe we need to separate from these dirtbags because we care about what happens to animals in their “care.” I’m a reputable, ethical and compassionate breeder as well as a person who has run a breed rescue and is looking to raise foster litters in the future for shelters and rescue groups, just because I’ve discovered I’m damn good at it.

I will fight forced spay-neuter because it doesn’t work. I will fight for compassionate, reputable and ethical breeders. And I will fight to shut down puppy mills and their Internet and retail outlets.

If any of that bothers you, I bloody well don’t care. Because it’s not about politics and “winning” for me:

It’s about the animals.

Authorities seized 374 animals from the Thyme and Sage Ranch in Cazenovia, Wisc.; as of last week the only animals still at the ranch were horses. A coordinated effort between various animal agencies, including the local sheriff’s department, Humane Society of the United States, the SPCA’s Mobile Animal Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Unit, the American Humane Association, United Animal Nations, and others. My local shelter, the Dane County Humane Society, has taken in the animals. Of course the shelter doesn’t have room for this many animals, so they are housed in tents on the shelter’s parking lots to decrease the possibility of any spreading of disease.  The ASPCA is collecting evidence for prosecution. Many of the animals were in serious medical condition. You know the drill: matted, filthy animals covered with feces and urine, open wounds, broken bones, dog carcasses, horrendous housing conditions, only on a scale of hundreds. I nearly threw up when the first reports came in.

Owned and operated by Jennifer Petkus, the sanctuary had a contract with Richland County, which does not have its own shelter, to take in stray dogs. The sanctuary also took in rescues. Petkus now faces 16 charges of animal abuse and neglect in her criminal complaint (10 counts of mistreating animals, one count of improper shelter of animals and 5 counts of unlawful deposit of animal carcass) and is looking at $315,000 of fines and a possibility of eight years in jail. She was released on a $10,000 signature bond.

Rumors abound about what was really going on at the ranch. Some say Petkus was breeding puppies, some think she was buying them from Amish breeders, some think she took in every animal sent or given to her. Is she a large scale hoarder or just a commercial operation trying to make money? I hope the truth will come out. Petkus says she is innocent and will prove herself in court. I don’t know how it’s possible to see the miserable conditions of the animals that came out of there and still say with a straight face — much less believe –  that the animals were well cared for. Petkus is innocent until proven guilty. Meanwhile, the fetid fruits of her labor must be cared and paid for by others, both financially and in emotional and physical suffering.
 
I have offered to foster one of the dogs. None of them will be released for a while until some of the dust settles. Last week they told me it would take a couple of weeks before the fosters would be sent out, and needs could change every day. Many of the dogs will be sent to other local shelters and rescue groups, but given the sheer numbers of animals some dogs will go into foster care.  At this point how many foster homes will be needed is unclear.  It’s all I can do to not feel so helpless in the face of such misery.

***Update May 27, 2009*** (from the shelter)

At this time the caretaking of the animals continues to be provided by volunteers from United Animal Nations (UAN), HSUS, and DCHS. The animals being cared for include 315 dogs, 21 rabbits, 2 chinchillas, 1 cat, 1 ferret, 1 rooster, 14 birds, and 23 horses.  The horses are currently being kept at a separate location.  In addition to the regular care, many of the animals had and continue to have medical issues that needed immediate and extreme attention.

And here’s one more: “Unlicensed breeders.”

To understand just what’s wrong with that phrase, you might have to consider for a moment something that has nothing to do with dogs. Let’s try gardening.

You love orchids. You’ve been growing them for years, in a big kitchen window. Maybe you even have a greenhouse in the garden, a small plastic-walled building with controlled light, heat and humidity.  You spend time out there every evening after work, and on the weekends. It relaxes you.

You also go to orchid shows, where you socialize and talk with other orchid growers. You belong to six orchid email lists, read a handful of orchid blogs, and have a t-shirt with “In the marsh pink orchid’s faces/With their coy and dainty graces/Lure us to their hiding places” on it.

After you’d been showing orchids for a few years, you began getting booths at a few orchid shows, and selling some of your best efforts — at least, the ones you could bear to part with.  Orchid growing, cultivation, and preservation had become your life.

Then one day, your local city council determined that local orchid growers are using too much water, electricity, and other town resources. Some exotic orchids had escaped from cultivation and started to out-compete native orchids in the wild. The fertilizer used to make them bloom was putting a strain on the local sewage facility. And there was also the problem of sales tax — were some of these backyard-and-kitchen orchid growers cheating the state and county out of revenue?

In the way of lawmakers everywhere, the city council had come up with a plan: local residents needed to get a license to grow orchids. And because orchid growing is obviously a hobby of the elite, that license was going to cost, oh, five hundred bucks a year. And if you had a greenhouse out back? Double.

The huge orchid growers — the ones with their gigantic glass houses and insecticide misters and big trucks coming to take the orchids off to your local supermarket, where they would be purchased on impulse by someone who thought orchids were purty and had no more idea how to feed, water, or preserve them than they knew how to fly — were delighted. Oh, not that they really saw the little orchid fanatics as competition, but in these tough economic times, every dollar helped.

The home orchid growers freaked out. They didn’t have a lobby, had never thought of what they did as a business or something nefarious or dangerous. Why on earth were they suddenly being regulated? Who  could have imagined such a thing?

So they talked and wrung their hands and posted passionately to their orchid lists. They vowed to bring all their orchids indoors, get shades that let in the light but blocked the view and start buying their orchid food out of town. After all, they reasoned, it’s not like the city would go door to door looking for them. Lay low, that’s the ticket.

That’s pretty much what happened in the world of hobby dog and cat breeding back in the 90s. And it keeps happening, because laying low continues to be the first response of most people when they perceive a threat. And laying low means no communication, no organization, and no dissent.

And just as the growers in my imaginary orchid world discovered that yes, the city really was going to go door to door and look for suspicious greenhouses and window shades and excessive use of electricity, hobby breeders realized that local animal control was actually going to come into their houses and check their kitchen cupboards and call their veterinarians to find out what kind of care their pets were getting and count noses to make sure limit laws weren’t being violated and monitor the number of poop piles in the backyard.

And like the orchid growers I invented, the hobby breeders had no lobby. They weren’t organized beyond the levels necessary to figure out who was going to be at the annual breed picnic every summer. They had no fund raising machine, no sense of “us against them,” no cultural identity that might have unified them. They were liberal and conservative, religious and atheist, old and young, and not in the habit of doing things like protesting or calling their legislators — or really, even knowing who they were.

They were caught entirely by surprise to find out that their local government thought they needed to trot down to City Hall and register their names, addresses, and numbers of pets, explain which animals had reproductive organs, pay extra for the privilege of letting them keep them, and humbly supplicate themselves before an animal control officer who couldn’t tell a Norfolk from a Norwich terrier, let alone judge which dog or bitch was breeding quality, in order to get permission to do what they and many generations before them had been doing for hundreds of years: have a litter of puppies or kittens.

Imagine their shock to further discover that this was happening in towns, counties and states all over the nation. That it was being driven by an aggressive campaign to end the breeding of cats and dogs, and that it was focusing its efforts not on the big factory farms of pet breeding but on the people doing it in their kitchens — the ones who had no lobby, no organizational structure, little skill at fighting back.

Now, let me ask you one question: is any of this a scenario under which you would feel comfortable going down and registering with the local authorities as an orchid grower, er, I mean, breeder? Or even as someone who has intact animals?

Because animal control has not shown itself to be your friend; to the contrary, in many places, animal control is hostile in the extreme to anyone who breeds or shows dogs or cats.

Your local city council members or state representatives have no understanding of what’s going on — probably even less than you do. So when someone suggests to them that restricting, licensing and legislating breeding will control animal suffering, reduce impact on the shelter system and bring in revenue, they’re all for it. When you tell them what’s really going on, they think you’re being paranoid. They say you’re a conspiracy theorist. So what trust you might have had in them is gone.

Even your friends who don’t raise orchids dogs or cats don’t understand why you’re so against this. If you have nothing to hide, they say, what does it matter that they want you to get a license, register with them, or let them come into your house and inspect your greenhouse kennel bedroom?

In vain you wave your copy of the United States Constitution in the air. Don’t you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Aren’t you supposed to be free of unreasonable searches?

That’s when their eyes narrow. So, they ask, do you have something to hide?

And that, dear readers, is why I’m against licensing dog and cat breeders. Because it’s intrusive, wrong, and it isn’t going to do what its proponents claim it will. It doesn’t increase revenue — to the contrary, San Mateo County found that its breeder licensing program decreased license compliance after they instituted it in the 90s. There is no evidence it decreases shelter numbers, and it does nothing but drive good, caring breeders underground or out of the hobby, surrendering their turf to the factory farms of pet breeding — who are, by the way, licensed breeders.

Of course, there’s at least one way in which this analogy is flawed. Orchids aren’t sentient creatures and don’t suffer if thrown on the compost pile or deprived of water and light. Nor is the orchid being tenderly raised in someone’s kitchen happier than an orchid being grown in a huge commercial greenhouse. (Well, I actually know a lot of gardeners who tell me that’s not true, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is.)

But from the point of view of the dog or cat fancier, the analogy is pretty apt. Except that orchids don’t love you back the way dogs and cats do, so I’d say their passion for animals runs even deeper than the orchid grower’s passion for her plants.

Dogs and cats aren’t plants, and they deserve our protection.  So by all means, let’s continue to have laws against the abuse and neglect of animals, and let’s actually try enforcing them, too.

But licensing dog and cat breeders does nothing but put a group of people who love dogs and cats — love them fiercely — at odds with those with whom they share the goal of seeing fewer animals die in shelters and improving the lives of dogs and cats. They end up hiding instead of running breed rescue groups and driving in transport relays for rescued animals and raising money for animal welfare and volunteering at the local shelter and whelping the puppies of pregnant rescued animals and fostering orphaned kittens.

So the next time you think it odd that dedicated small dog and cat breeders don’t want to be licensed, try to put yourself in their shoes, and ask: is this really a good idea? Does this really help animals? Or does it just frighten, intimidate, and anger animal lovers?

Heather’s comment:

I find the cage normally reserved for chickens unacceptable for chickens.

Spend a little time with mentally normal free-ranging hens like mine — see how they spend dawn to dark scratching, foraging, exploring, interacting, busy busy busy birds. How they like their nests just so. How they get crabby and bored when they are cooped (with over 4 sqare feet of floor space per bird — 3 times the commercial standard for lifetime confinement — plus deep litter, scratch grain, kitchen scraps, and a cabbage tetherball for entertainment) for even a day during bad weather. The pleasure they show in dustbathing, roosting, inept flying, and all the other avian pleasures. And then tell me that it is perfectly okay to deny them outlets for every single natural behavior and instinctive motor pattern, cram them into wire crates for two years of egg production, until they are spent.

The contrast between the life of a well-cared-for pet and puppymill breeding stock is just about exactly as stark. One difference is, a dog — not even a setter — cannot live for several months without a brain.

A clean, gleaming, automated puppymill that is duly licensed and passes inspection is every bit as much of a hellhole for the dogs who never leave their cages as anything featured on Animal Cops.

It is also every bit as unacceptable as a way of producing puppies who are to live in homes with people. Seriously, you really do not want that puppy. It has not had the benefit of a normal developmental environment; nor can anyone determine anything meaningful about its parents’ temperaments.

Filth and physical neglect and disease are, to some extent, red herrings.

The abuse is inherent in the business model. Bleach is a possible element of good husbandry; it is not the definition of it.

Amen. We’ve known since the ’50s (Fuller and Scott) that puppies need to be raised like family members to be good family members.  I don’t care how flippin’ clean the millers make their factory farms … it’s not acceptable, and should not be supported by anyone looking to get a family pet. Adopt a shelter pet, or find a reputable breeder. Don’t support cleaner factory farms …. for dogs or for livestock.

Animals – all animals – deserve better than to be treated like unfeeling machines. Factory farming is environmentally destructive, a threat to our health and national security and cruel to animals.

Humane, sustainable agriculture is the answer for food animals, environments where they can act normally, enjoying normal behavior for their species (and yes! they clearly enjoy a normal life) –  not be treated like unfeeling meat-growing or egg-laying machines.

And no puppy-mills -- “clean,” “model” or otherwise — is the answer for pets.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture should not be the deciding what’s proper for the future members of human families.