If you’re like me, knee-deep in the fight against puppy mills, you’re not surprised to hear that the Amish are prevalent dog breeders who supply pet shops. However, you may not understand why. Maybe when you hear “Amish” you think of Dwight Schrute’s cousin, Mose, from The Office. Or maybe you sometimes see them with a horse and buggy on a back road. They’re around more than you think. Amish communities are in over half of US states, even upstate New York. You just may not see them all that much because they keep to themselves. After all, their whole thing is not conforming to the outside world. Or at least, it’s supposed to be.
Their “non-conformist” approach becomes muddled considering the Amish tend to be prolific puppy millers. Their kennels may be hidden behind fences and trees, or in plain view from the road. As CAPS’ lead investigator, I’ve been to hundreds of Amish mills over the years. I’ve learned about their culture and watched as they’ve become ever more ingrained in the pet trade. It’s given me insight into how an isolated people has become intertwined with us all.
Who are the Amish?
Before we get into the pet trade, let’s clear up some misconceptions about the Amish. Yes, they are a religion, and are a denomination of Christianity. No, there’s no such thing as an Amish church, because they worship inside their homes. Yes, they do pay taxes, they just don’t pay federal taxes for welfare-based programs because they don’t benefit from them. And no, they don’t have moustaches, because in 17th-century Europe, soldiers typically had moustaches. The Amish are pacifists, and when an Amish man marries, he begins to grow his beard but keeps his upper lip shaved to show a defiance against military service and commitment to non-violence.
They decided to not be “worldly” by not conforming to the outside world and by staying away from the temptations that technology provides. With social media being what it is, it seems like they are on to something. They speak their own language commonly known as Pennsylvania Dutch, but also speak English. They marry only within their own communities, and anyone who leaves is excommunicated and cut off even from close family. If you’re not one of them, you’re “English.” That’s what they call you.
The benefits of the Amish were best explained to me by an Amish puppy miller. He pointed out that while the “English” have insurance for things like homes, the Amish don’t, because they don’t need it. He said that if his house burned down today, Amish people would come from several communities over to donate supplies and build his family a new home for free. Within a week, he’d be moved in as if nothing had happened. I have to say that I respect that. In my “English” community, I can’t get a neighbor to pick up my trash can if it falls over.
Why do Amish run puppy mills?
But what’s with all the puppy mills? When I go through records of breeders supplying pet stores, I often see names like Yoder, Stoltzfus, Zimmerman, and Graber. These are typical Amish names, and Amish breeders have become so common that many pet shop employees will tell you upfront, “We get most of our puppies from the Amish.” How did this come to be? How did the non-conformists, who refuse to grow moustaches, drive a car, or own a TV, end up with USDA licenses for breeding and AKC registrations for their dogs? And if they don’t use technology, why do Amish breeders have cell phones? I’ve learned over the years that while the Amish are so different from the rest of us in many ways, they are just as greedy.
I’ve investigated Amish breeders for CAPS since 2003. Back then, I primarily focused on breeders in Pennsylvania and Ohio. But I’ve since investigated Amish mills in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. I’ve seen more bad Amish mills than non-Amish, but that’s only because I’ve probably seen more Amish mills than non-Amish mills, especially in recent years. I’ve had them take me on tours through their kennels and invite me into their homes. I’ve had candid conversations with them about their culture and breeding businesses.
I’ve come to know a people for whom hard work is not just an ethic or a means to a paycheck but a lifestyle. It’s a reward unto itself. They believe that working with the earth means being godly. Growing vegetables and raising livestock to them is noble. I suppose any non-Amish farmer would agree with them. And just like many non-Amish farmers, the Amish realized that instead of having twenty hogs in a barn, they could have a hundred dogs, and puppies will bring a higher price than feeder pigs.
Because so many people want to buy puppies online and from pet shops, the Amish realized they could fill the demand. In that way, they found themselves engaged with the outside world they had previously avoided. They began using cell phones under the excuse that it was just for work. While they still don’t use the internet, they’ll let someone else post their puppies for sale online. They won’t buy vans and ship puppies to stores, but they’ll pay someone else to do this. “Working with the earth” turned into peddling puppies. They became worldly, whether they admit it or not.
USDA’s Five-Year Plan increased number of Amish breeders
Part of USDA’s Five-Year Plan for 2015-2020 included a program for encouraging Amish and Mennonite breeder to obtain a federal license. There were a number of unlicensed Amish who were breeding dogs and selling puppies through brokers to pet shops. The USDA’s program was a success. The states with the most USDA-licensed dog breeding and brokering facilities are now Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, the latter two replacing Iowa and Oklahoma.
Amish breeders sell to brokers (Amish and Non-Amish)
Amish breeders use a variety of USDA-licensed brokers. Many have relied on Blue Ribbon Puppies out of Odon, IN. It was founded by Levi Graber, an Amish man. CAPS originally investigated some of Graber’s breeders for a two-part story with NBC in Indianapolis. You may recognize Blue Ribbon as the broker linked to a multi-state Campylobacter outbreak from infected puppies. I’ve investigated many of Blue Ribbon’s Amish breeders, where I found dogs in rows of wire cages, each having only enough room to take a step or two in one direction before having to turn around again. For example, in 2018, in Loogootee, IN, I documented the kennel of Justin Knepp, where I saw Beagles and Weimaraners walking on cage wire, with enough space to step through doggie-doors to the outdoor portions of their cages, circle around, and then go back.
Other Amish breeders use a variety of non-Amish brokers, including, J.A.K.’s Puppies, which used fraudulent nonprofits to funnel puppies as “rescues” to pet shops that were prohibited by law from selling puppies from breeders. In 2018, I visited four Amish breeders in Wisconsin who sell to J.A.K.’s. They had dogs in rows of runs and wire cages. The kennel of Ervin Bontrager, USDA-licensed and inspected, stank of ammonia. Matted dogs circled cages, in which any hard surfaces were stained with feces. Dark brown water was puddled under several cages inside Bontrager’s kennel building.
Lancaster County, PA
In my early years for CAPS, I focused heavily on the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the Amish first settled in the U.S. in 1760. In the early 2000s, there were so many Amish puppy mills packed together that I visited up to twelve a day. They were shockingly bad. I remember one I went to in 2005: David Blank, a USDA-licensed breeder who had 30 dogs pacing small wire cages that had clumps of fur and feces hanging from their floorings. Many of the dogs were so matted I couldn’t tell make out the breeds. I could see that one dog was a Miniature Pinscher, though, and she was missing fur on much of her body. Around her eyes her skin was swollen, cracked, and bleeding. David’s wife showed me the kennel with pride. That same day,
Amos Stoltzfus gave me a tour of his USDA-licensed facility. Dogs were in rows of small cages inside barns, their barks deafening in the enclosed space. Cobwebs hung under their cages over feces on the ground that had wood chips thrown on top, doing little to mask the odor. In one cage, a cowering Bichon had blood running from her prolapsed eyelid glands (commonly known as “cherry eye”). Also on that day, I saw the kennel of Ammon Weaver, also USDA-licensed and not far from Stoltzfus. Weaver’s facility had Labradors, Jack Russell Terriers and Cairn Terriers in cages so small they could barelyhttps://caps-web.org/weaver-ammon/ turn around.
I visited Weaver’s kennel two years later, and it was still the same. In fact, I visited a lot of Amish kennels over the next two years. I saw dogs packed in wire cages over feces that had been piled up for weeks or months. I walked in barns where the barking of dogs was so loud it hurt my ears, and the ammonia from urine and manure was so intense it hurt to breath. Almost every facility I saw was USDA-licensed, and they always passed inspections.
Petland undercover employment investigation
After working undercover at The Hunte Corporation in 2004 and investigating some of their breeders, I took a job at a Petland in Columbus, OH that obtained puppies from Hunte. This store also used Ohio-based Amish breeders and brokers, some of whom were unlicensed,. The store sent me out to buy puppies, often using cash, so the transactions couldn’t be traced.
Deception by Petland and other pet shops
If you look at the state of kennels now, you may think things have changed. And they have, until you look closer. While many still keep dogs in wire cages, it’s more common to see dogs in runs with dirt, concrete, or crushed rock floorings. In the last few years, pet shops, particularly Petland, have used the best-looking kennels to show the breeders from whom they source puppies. They film dogs and puppies playing in lush green yards, and claim it is how their Amish breeders all keep dogs.
The reality is different. I do see breeders with exercise yards, but they are often smaller and made of crushed rock. Rarely do I see dogs in them, and have encountered no breeder who, despite what most Petland stores claim, gives their dogs unfettered access to the yards. And those long dog runs are deceptive for a few reasons. For one thing, they aren’t always as pristine as pet stores make them out to be. In 2024, I went to Paul Shetler’s kennel in Bluffton, IN. Shetler sells to Puppy Home Match, a pet shop in Michigan that assured me they don’t buy from puppy mills. Shetler’s kennel had Yorkshire Terriers and French Bulldogs in concrete runs about fifteen feet long. They were quite spacious, with indoor portions they could go in to avoid weather. With only two to three little dogs per run, it seemed like a lot of space. However, weeks of feces was mashed onto the floorings. There was little room for the dogs to move without walking in their own waste.
For another thing, those spacious dog runs sometimes don’t even exist. In 2019, I documented the kennel of John Erb in Baltic, OH. Erb was selling to Petland in Sarasota, FL, where I was told the store’s breeders don’t keep dogs in cages. As an employee showed me a video of dogs running in an open field, she said, “All the breeders are like that.” Erb was not like that. I filmed a kennel at the back of his property, which had dogs pacing and circling in small wire cages. As I filmed, Amish children collected dogs and puppies in a wheelbarrow to be moved somewhere else.
Rotting teeth of puppy mill dogs
And finally, when a kennel does in fact have runs, and they are clean, things can be different up-close. In 2015, I spoke to USDA-licensed breeder Darrell Graber, in Bloomfield, IN. Graber sold puppies to Blue Ribbon Puppies, and kept his dogs in a kennel set between a chicken barn and a retention pond. Graber had a loose German Shepherd on the property, and showed me how the dog’s teeth are in good shape. He explained that dogs kept in kennels have bad teeth because they aren’t chewing on toys and sticks to clean them. I’ve seen this for myself working at breeding kennels, and I’ve seen it in dogs I’ve rescued from them.
When I rescued Emma, a three-year-old Chihuahua from a Wanda Johnson during an investigation in Nebraska, she appeared to be fat and in good shape. But her teeth were in such bad shape that eighteen of them had to be removed, an infection had gone from a tooth to her nasal cavity and likely resulted in her heart arrhythmia. Such conditions are not noticed by people, including USDA inspectors, and certainly don’t appear in the videos pet shops show customers.
Breeder Darrell Graber also told me that to get rid of spent breeding dogs, it’s difficult to give them away, since they’ve lived in a kennel their whole lives. He said the dogs must be put down, and for a vet to do so, it requires two shots. Graber then said that it’s much easier to use a .22 caliber gun and shoot a dog in the head, instead.
These kinds of problems are not unique to Amish breeders, of course. “English” breeders neglect their dogs’ teeth (like Emma’s breeder), hide their breeding conditions, and of course, have puppy mills. Because of social isolation, it is more challenging to uncover Amish breeding conditions than it is for the non-Amish because most Amish don’t have their own websites. There are exceptions, however, and a number of Amish puppy millers sell through websites that exclusively feature Amish puppies, such as Lancaster Puppies, Greenfield Puppies, and Buckeye Puppies.
The Amish may have cell phones for work, but rarely use them and rarely post their numbers online. They reside in communities most of us have never been to and don’t even know exist. Pet shops speak on their behalf, allowing the Amish to hide behind a veil of innocence associated with their simple lifestyle. If any of us have complaints about them, they won’t hear about it. Again, it’s not like you can call, email or post a review about their puppies on their websites. Not only do Amish breeders not know anything about how many dogs die in shelters of “English” communities, they don’t care. It’s not a part of their world, and they go out of their way to stay separate from ours. Unless, of course, they can profit from ours. Amish breeders are integrated into the pet trade and yet immune to customer complaints about their abuses.
Adopt
And so the only way to fight the puppy mill industry now is to promote adoption. If the Amish have no “English” people to sell to, they won’t sell puppies. We are in a new era of the pet trade. As puppy mills flourish, an increasing number of natural disasters means that animal shelters are ever more inundated with rescued animals. Meanwhile, some dog rescue groups have a message of “Adopt or buy from a responsible breeder.” But today, any breeding is irresponsible. We don’t have to condemn all breeders, but we don’t have to stand up for them when it’s the dogs in shelters who need our support instead. Our message should be: “Adopt.” Nothing else. Just a period after that word.
