An issue that's been bothering me for quite a while is that the operation of puppy mills is still legal. Every year hundreds of thousands of dogs are forced to spend their lives among the ten thousand puppy mills in the U.S. They've been around for decades and continue to thrive because too many customers are persuaded by the too-cute-to-resist puppies they produce. In my opinion, puppy mills should be outlawed because of the physical harm and emotional damage they cause.
Outlawing puppy mills is crucial because it would end physical harm to the dogs. In order to make room for more dogs, cages are stacked on top of one another. The floors of those cages were designed with a grid wire flooring which included spaces large enough for feces to easily pass through to dogs in the lower cages. What wasn't taken into consideration was the possibility of injury. Since the spaces are large enough for feces, they are large enough to trap a dog's paw, increasing the risk of injury. The stacking of cages encourages over crowding, which can cause diseases to spread very quickly. Diseases such as epilepsy, cataracts, and mammary tumors are the most common way dogs die in puppy mills.
While puppy mills provide a way to breed and sell dogs with little effort and investment, such dogs are not well bred. It is assumed that since the dog comes from a pet store it must be a good dog, when in reality these dogs have been neglected and are unhealthy, which brings me to the emotional damage they cause. In a puppy mill, puppies are taken away from their mothers as early as six weeks of age, and since the first months of a dog's life are a critical socialization period, they begin to adapt to fearful behavior, and lack socialization with humans and other animals.
