« Chimps beat humans in memory test | Main | Crow and Kitten are Friends »
December 06, 2007
Damaged dogs plucked from the assembly line
Inhumane ‘puppy mills’ come under increasing state, local enforcement
One day early last month, Gary Larrowe, the county administrator of Carroll County, Va., declared the small town of Hillsville a disaster area.
There were just too many puppies to deal with.
“We counted 1,080 dogs on November the 2nd,” Larrowe said, making it necessary to call in state emergency officials and the Red Cross to help.
Carroll County found itself with 1,080 dogs — more than 1,100 after new births over the next few days — after county animal control officers, acting on information compiled during a five-month undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States, raided Horton’s Pups, a mass breeding farm in Hillsville, near Roanoke.
More than a dozen animal rescue agencies, some from as far away as Florida, agreed to care for and distribute the dogs for adoption. Their task is difficult. Most were already near capacity, and space is at a premium because, with winter approaching, animals can’t always be housed outdoors.
The breeding farm, which was raided Nov. 1, is “the biggest operation of its kind to our knowledge ever,” said John Snyder of the Humane Society — part of a secret nationwide network of thousands of puppy mills that sell purebred dogs to pet stores, animal brokers and Web-based pet businesses.
Assembly line breeding condemned.
Read the Full Story at MSNBC
Posted by sue at December 6, 2007 08:30 AM