Rosie, puppy mill survivor, home seeker

This is Rosie.

Rosie is currently in Quebec, at Hopeful Hearts dog rescue. She was a dog seized from Paws "R" Us kennel, a Humane Society International operation that removed 500 dogs from a property and shut the business down. For good, I hope. Rosie apparently is positive for Von Willebrand's Disease, which essentially means that her blood does not clot as it ought to. Many Dobermans are carriers of Von Willebrand's, meaning they have the gene (which there is a proven test for, by the way), but are not affected by it. Being affected requires both copies of the gene, and complicates things like whelping (I would assume) and surgeries. Rosie there has been spayed, so one might assume that Hopeful Hearts took measures necessary to make sure that this was a safe procedure for her, probably by having banked blood available for Rosie in case she bled too much.

According to the Hopeful Hearts description, Rosie is a friendly and playful girl, and "Nosey Rosie" is apparently her nickname. A nosey Doberman, imagine a thing like that! She must be thrilled to finally be out of her puppy mill crate and out in the world, seeing and smelling all those things that she may not have even heard previously. The adoption fee for Rosie is $150 (I assume Canadian dollars, as that's where she is, but I'm not entirely sure) and if you're interested in adopting her, the email contact is adopting@hopefulhearts.ca .

Don't Buy From a Puppy Mill, Charlie Brown!

I thought I was really cool and came up with this correlation on my own, but The Examiner did beat me to it: Charlie Brown's Snoopy is from a puppy mill.

Sure, it was called Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, but even such a pastoral-sounding name isn't really all that great once you think about it. Where do puppies come from? The puppy farm. It's suspect to me, especially with the apparent prevalence of Amish puppy mills, ostensibly on their farms.

Help Stop Puppy Mills!

For those of you who are stateside, there's a petition on the White House website to stop puppy mills.

To prevent the suffering of dogs and puppies in puppy mills, will the President act to close the current regulatory loophole and require large-scale, commercial breeders who sell puppies online and directly to the public to be covered by USDA’s Animal Welfare Act regulations, including minimum standards for humane care and treatment? This will help to protect consumers from unknowingly buying sick puppies from inhumane facilities and help to eliminate the horrible conditions in large-scale puppy mills.

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/crack-down-puppy-mills/B9W46NCH#thank-you=p 

You need to create an account to sign the petition, but it is literally your name, an email address, and your zip code. They then send you an email to "complete your account", and you click that link to go back to the web site, where you can then sign the petition.

The petition apparently runs 'til October 23, and the goal was 5,000 people, but the current total is 11,033 signatures. Double the hoped-for response? That seems promising.

So, sign the petition today, and perhaps it will make a difference.

Puppy Mill Awareness Day: September 17

Today is Puppy Mill Awareness Day.

http://www.awarenessday.org/

I posted once before about puppy mills, in Where do Puppies Come From?  It's a message that bears repeating.  Awareness is important because, literally, most people just don't know about what's going on.  They don't know that Missouri is the puppy mill capital of America.  They don't know that Amish puppy mills are responsible for supplying a large amount of pet stores with fluffy cute merchandise, from Pennsylvania and Ohio (and other places as well, I'm sure).  They don't know that good breeders care about their puppies as they would their own offspring, and that a good breeder will be there for you throughout your dog's life, to help you, to give you advice, to take your dog back if, God forbid, you couldn't keep her anymore.

A movie came out on HBO recently, Madonna of the Mills (website here: http://madonnaofthemills.com/), following a woman who goes to puppy mills and does things like rescue the breeding females from certain death, when they can't breed any longer.  Why would the mills allow filming?  Well, puppy mills aren't illegal.  There are laws about cruelty and the conditions in which animals can be kept, but even when complaints are made, it's hard to prove anything. And it's hard for legislators to be motivated on this issue.  It's a hard thing, legally and morally, to say "Yes, you own those dogs, but though they are your property, you can't breed them until they can't anymore, and then take them out back and shoot them."  You can't legislate how many litters a breeder can have a year.  You can't legall quantify how much attention can be paid to a litter of puppies, to make sure they're appropriate stimulated and socialized, so that they'll live full and wonderful lives.  You can't require that people health test and only breed remarkable specimens of the breed.

It's up to the consumer to make those choices about who they buy from.  And the consumer isn't.  The consumer is shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for "designer hybrids" that are actually mutts you can find at the shelter, if nothing else for far cheaper.  The consumer doesn't know why show people are so stuck about papers and Championships and things, not thinking that Championships and competitions are a concrete way to say "yes, this is a good dog.  Yes, this dog's genetics should be passed on."

Know your breeder, folks.  Don't buy from pet stores.  If you don't want to deal with a breeder and papers and things, go to the shelter.  Go to a rescue.  Heck, go to a breed rescue!  There are a lot of dogs out there.  One of them might be yours.

Where do puppies come from?

I was in a mall today, and that mall had a pet store. Not just a pet supply store, but one that had that row of cages, separated by windows, with puppies in them.  You know the type.

There was a Puggle, and a Morkie, and a Chihuahua, and a Pomeranian (though the people standing next to me thought it wasn't a purebred Pom; I thought it was, but held my tongue).  There was a Bernese Mountain Dog, and an English Bulldog.  The smaller breeds were all $700, but Berner was $1999, and the English Bulldog had a sign that said "Serious inquiries only."

So, where did these puppies come from?