Puppy mills. They’re filthy, overcrowded, often with hundreds of dogs crammed into tiny cages. If you haven’t seen a puppy mill, check out this video. Or this one.
Or just look at this picture:
These dogs spend their entire lives in confinement, exposed to the elements and denied proper veterinary care. It’s horrifying. Kitten mills are horrifying, too. Animal mills like these exist for one primary purpose — to supply animals to pet shops.
You may have seen the above video in recent articles by The Dodo and Care2. If you haven’t, please give it a watch. Using undercover footage, we expose the deceptive methods used by Southern California pet shops to hide the source of their animals.
But pet shops aren’t just a problem in California. They are selling animals all over the country, which is why they present one of our best opportunities in the fight against puppy mills. If pet shops didn’t sell animals, or they only offered shelter animals for adoption, puppy mills would lose their biggest market and go out of business.
Through protests, we’ve convinced some pet shops to go humane and forced others to close, but that sort of pressure isn’t always enough. That’s why CAPS is going city-by-city to pass local ordinance laws that ban the retail sale of puppies, kittens, and rabbits.
We brought this ordinance strategy to the forefront a few years ago with a victory in West Hollywood, CA, which banned the retail sale of animals. Since then, we’ve helped pass ordinances in Los Angeles, Glendale, and San Diego, as well as other locations in the US and Canada.
If you would like to see a pet shop ordinance in your area, there are two things you can do.
1). Contact CAPS to let us know about any pet shops in your area that sell animals. We can investigate them to gather evidence, then approach your city council with an effective ordinance strategy.
2). If you have purchased a sick or dying puppy or kitten from a pet shop, please fill out a CAPS complaint form. We will use this information to support our ordinance work.
The ordinance movement is gaining steam, so please help us keep the momentum going. With your assistance, we can stop puppy and kitten mills.
