Now, I’m not trying to offend anyone. I know that we all do our best to make the best decisions. It’s not that any of us are asking to be taken advantage of or fooled. It’s that pet stores have mastered taking advantage of people and masking the source of their puppies. They sell puppies from puppy mills, all while thousands of dogs and cats are euthanized in Michigan animal shelters each year due to lack of space. Many of us get fooled and buy from pet stores, without realizing our best option is to adopt a dog from a shelter or rescue organization.
As CAPS lead investigator and dog rescuer, I have a deep understanding of how the pet trade works. I went undercover to Michigan’s 13 puppy-selling pet shops to inquire about the treatment of dogs by the breeders supplying the pet shops with puppies. Then, I went to their breeders to see their kennels for myself. Michigan pet shops do indeed buy from puppy mills.
Most of Michigan’s pet shops are in the Detroit and Grand Rapids areas. I found that some sold a lot of puppies, and some sold a few. Some employees didn’t know much about where their puppies come from, and some claimed to have intimate knowledge of their store’s breeders. Some had only a few puppies for sale, or even none at the time I was there. Others had walls filled with enclosures of puppies. Most stores had puppies in aquarium-like enclosures set in walls so customers could browse as employees sized them up for a same-day sale often with a convenient, yet high percentage, finance plan. Puppies of all kinds were on sale. They were usually 8 – 12 weeks old, and most jumped and pawed at the glass of their enclosures to attract the attention of people walking by. Who wouldn’t fall for a cute puppy wanting to get out of an enclosure?
For customers who weren’t sure about buying a puppy, the pet shops were ready. Several had TVs showing videos of dogs and puppies playing in vast yards and grassy fields, which they claimed is how the breeding dogs live.
An employee at Petland Novi, who explained she had worked at the store for eleven years, told me that breeding dogs have “large turn-out yards.” She even said, “So the dogs, the parents, puppies, all of that can run around out in the backyard, get some exercise. They’ll do enrichments as well with them. So they’ll hide treats out there to help them try and find it for them.” Those are bold claims. When I documented several breeders selling to Petland Novi, I found the exact opposite.
Like many Michigan pet stores, Petland Novi relies on breeders in Indiana. One of its breeders is Marjorie Graber in Odon, IN. Breeding dogs at the facility were in a small outdoor pen with a crushed rock flooring. It provided about enough space for the Miniature Poodles inside to walk for a couple seconds in one direction and a few more seconds in another.
Whelping dogs and puppies at Graber’s kennel lived elsewhere in small, elevated cages. There was no exercise yard. The facility had no fenced yard for dogs at all, just the small pen and cages.
The store also buys puppies from Dennis and Amanda Stoll in Montgomery, IN. They had a few chain link runs, each just a few feet across. Inside were blue barrels turned over on their sides to act as dog houses. No toys or enrichment of any kind were inside, and certainly no exercise yard was around.
The same address for the Stolls is used by Dennis Wagler, who sells to The Barking Boutique in Grand Rapids. At The Barking Boutique, an employee told me that TikTok videos proved the store doesn’t use puppy mills. She said that the videos showed dogs in “a very open space,” and that breeders “have fields” for the dogs. There was no field of prancing dogs at the kennel in Montgomery.
Petland Novi and The Barking Boutique are larger puppy stores, with dozens of puppies at each when I visited them. In contrast, a store called Teacup and Toys, a Pet Boutique, located on a quaint street of Birmingham amongst fashionable storefronts, had two puppies in it when I visited. The owner of the store swore he didn’t buy from puppy mills. For proof, he said that players and owners of the Tigers, Lions, Pistons, and Red Wings have puppies from him. He dodged my questions about the conditions his breeders kept dogs in but finally admitted that dogs were kept in a type of “exercise pen.” He also said that he only uses local breeders.
Turns out, that was all lies. I visited one of the store’s breeders, and unlike what the owner claimed, he wasn’t local. The breeder, Aaron Bontrager in Millersburg, IN, didn’t keep dogs in exercise pens. He kept them in cages. Dogs could either walk for a few steps on cage wire outside or go inside to even less space on plastic. Some dogs had fur so matted and filthy that I couldn’t determine what breed they were. The ground below their cages was covered in months of feces. No matter how the owner of Teacup and Toys A Pet Boutique defines “puppy mill,” it was very clear that Bontrager’s kennel is a puppy mill.
Puppy Home Match is an unusual pet store in Troy, MI. It’s in a business park that more resembles warehouses than offices. Inside, I saw eight tiny puppies running around on an open floor instead of kept in aquarium-like enclosures. The owner assured me he doesn’t use puppy mills, saying that designer dogs don’t come from mills. Well, I went to one of the store’s breeders. I’ll let you decide if it’s a puppy mill.
The breeder is Paul Shetler in Bluffton, Indiana. His kennel had dog runs on two sides of a building. They weren’t cages, so that’s at least good. And given that the Yorkshire Terriers and French Bulldogs at the kennel were small, they seemed to have even more space for their fifteen-foot-long concrete runs. But the runs were coated in feces. Almost every inch of them. It looked like the kennel hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and rain had washed manure down into a thick layer. This meant that forty dogs either couldn’t avoid the fecal build-up, or they had worn paths through it in order to walk along the wire flooring of their pens.
Michigan has the opportunity to ban pet shops from selling puppies, kittens, and rabbits from breeders. For all of those animals, the best way to ensure that they aren’t abused is to promote their adoption and not their commercial breeding. The stores have proven they will lie for profit, and are so good at covering their lies that it takes an undercover investigation to find the truth. That shouldn’t be the case with our animals, especially while shelters are overloaded and euthanizing animals for space.
Fortunately, adoption is not only an option, it’s the best option. By adopting a dog, you won’t support puppy mills, you’ll save a dog’s life, and you’ll have the best family member you can get. Unlike young puppies, dogs have fully developed immune systems, so are less likely to require expensive veterinary treatments like those often necessary for mill-bred puppies. Also, adopting is cheaper. Thousands of dollars cheaper. It’s typically $500 or less to adopt a dog, and $2,000 – $8,000 to buy a puppy at a pet store. Puppies’ personalities are unknown, and despite what many of us think, we can’t mold their personalities into what we want as we raise them.
On the other hand, many rescues foster dogs, meaning the dogs get to live with people who train them and learn the dogs’ personalities. The dogs already know how to walk on leashes and are potty-trained. The rescue knows if these dogs like other dogs, cats, and kid. They will also know their activity levels: Do they like going for walks, romping in the park, or being a couch potato. Adoption is the best option to know who you’re adding to your family.
We should support legislation that bans pet shops from selling puppies, kittens, and rabbits from breeders. Join CAPS in protecting vulnerable animals who can’t protect themselves. Advocating against commercial breeding while promoting adoption is a basic tenet of animal protection. After all, if we love our animals, we don’t try to profit off of them. We rescue them.
