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On Friday, April 11, 2008 I went to a puppy mill where I had been
called to pick up two Jack Russell Terriers that were no longer
wanted. I drove down a long drive to a large farm in rural
Coshocton County. There was a small fenced area off the side
of the drive where Golden Retrievers, Goldendoodles and Standard
Poodles were standing almost knee deep in mud. I passed them to
stop at a large barn with many out buildings. The Amish miller met
me there. We walked past two out buildings with double rows of
crates hanging off both sides. They were filled with small dogs;
some having up to three dogs in one 24X24 inch wire crate. The dogs
were filthy and matted.
The miller took me back to a kennel set up with one row of crates
off each side of the building. Outside the door of that building
were two large handmade wire cages approximately 3X5 feet. All four
sides, top and bottom were wire stretched from a wood frame. There
were 6 matted, filthy mini poodles (or some dog that resembled that
breed) in each of these cages with feces piled high enough to reach
the underside of the wire on the bottom. The dogs were so cramped
that they moved like a school of fish.
Inside the building was a wire crate with a mother dog with
puppies. There was no solid area in the bottom of the crate and the
puppies who appeared to be less than a week old; eyes not open and
only about 6 inches long, couldn't move as their extremities were
dangling through the wire. The mother dog was overly excited with
us in the building and was jumping and spinning in the cage,
smashing the puppies into the wire. It was hideous to watch.
The miller kept asking me to buy a male Papillon that he no longer
had use for since, and I quote, "the female had died," I didn't
want to know how. I kept telling the miller that I was not there to
purchase dogs but to just take the dogs he no longer wanted in his
program. He kept insisting that I see the dog. The inside of
kennel buildings have wire cages hanging on the walls that connect
to the wire cages on the outside. He picked up the lid of the
inside cage to get the Papillon but couldn't get him to come
inside. He walked outside to get the dog and found him with one of
his hind legs through the wire, shoved down so far that he could not
pull it out. The miller removed the leg from the wire while telling
me that he couldn't understand why the dog had fallen through the
wire, as he had never done that before.
The miller and I walked back inside the building where he sat the
dog down on a shelf. The dog fell over and lay on the shelf without
moving. I told him that I felt the dog needed a vet. He then
picked up the dog, stood him on his front legs, picked up his back
legs like a wheel barrow and started pumping them back and forth. I
asked him to stop and said again that the dog needed a vet, that he
appeared to be paralyzed. The miller told me that he felt that he
just needed to get circulation into his back legs and he'd be fine.
When he let the dog go he again fell over. He then threw
him into a crate. I once again suggested that the dog needed to see
a vet and that he would be no use to him as he couldn't breed being
paralyzed.
He then proceeded to get out the two Jack Russells that I had come
to pick up. The female Jack was a dwarf Jack (which is a breed
fault) and was pretty severely deformed. I was told that she had
never had her feet on anything but wire. She was 5 years old. None
of this millers cages had any solid area in them. They were
completely wire bottomed, inside the building and out. I kept
thinking of all her puppies that the miller had sold to pet stores.
They would be cute and tiny and the buyer would have no idea what a
genetic nightmare the mother was and what future medical problems
could plague their new puppy. No doubt major arthritis at a very
early age as well as other medical conditions that can accompany
dwarfism.
As we turned to walk out of the building, I reminded the miller that
his Papillon needed to see a vet and he picked him out of the crate
and handed him to me. He was nothing but bones covered in hair. He
was limp and soaked with urine. I asked the miller how long he
could have been lying outside stuck in the wire and he told me, and
I quote, "not more than a day or a day and a half." I knew that he
had been there longer than that.
My suspicions were confirmed by my vet who said that he had probably
been there for 3 days or so. He was dehydrated and weak. His back
end is hopefully only temporarily paralyzed as a result of spinal
trauma from struggling for days to free himself. He has no control
of anything past about the middle of his torso or control of his
bladder due to the inflammation in his spinal cord. With treatment
we hope he will regain his ability to walk and control his bladder.
He is improving.
Just to point out something -- this is the reason that total wire
cages and Likits are not acceptable in mass breeding
kennels. With a bottle of water, no waste to clean up and a dish
piled with food, millers can literally not go into their kennels for
days on end. This means that a lot of money can be generated from
these dogs with little effort. It also means that a dog can be
injured, stuck, sick, etc and not receive the attention that it
needs.
When gathering information on the dogs I was taking, he miller told
me that none of his adult dogs receive any vaccinations and that he
only vaccinates the puppies because the pet stores insist. He is
not USDA licensed - although all his puppies are sold to pet
stores. Having around 100 adult dogs you can imagine how many
puppies are produced from this one mill.
This is high on the list as one of the worst mills I've ever been
in. It was dirty, the dogs were in extreme cramped conditions with
multiple dogs in cages. There was no ability for the dogs to get
off the wire and even the puppies were lying on wire. I serious
don't know how the puppies would survive. These dogs are not
vaccinated, vetted, were filthy and matted and not even checked on
daily. Let me rephrase that; they are not checked on for days!
Just to add insult to injury as I was leaving the miller asked me if
I would take a Standard Poodle and wanted to know if I ever got
young Poodles in my program. He asked me to look for a young,
white, Standard Poodle for him and he would TRADE me for his old,
black, Standard Poodle. I explained to the miller how that would be
a conflict; I remove them from this situation not put them in it. I
told him that we spay/neuter these dogs, rehab them and place them
in homes. He asked me what is spay/neuter . End of story!!
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