As a Cash Crop, Puppies’ Lives Going to Dogs

The cries of caged dogs drown out the sounds of chickens and cows on Ivan Stoltzfus’ farm.

About 50 animals with matted coats sit crammed together two and three to each small cage, clawing frantically at the wire walls as they try to perch on mesh floors. They shake uncontrollably; they cower to human touch.

The dogs are not pets. They are a lucrative industry for Stoltzfus and fellow farmers in heavily Amish Lancaster County, all capitalizing on the rural farmlands and close proximity to major cities.

The animals breeding on farms like Stoltzfus’ spend their short lives in cages, giving birth twice a year to litters of purebreds that are fast becoming Pennsylvania’s most profitable cash crop.

The bigger breeders keep more than 300 female dogs on hand, producing a steady supply that fuels an economy of pet stores and brokers who resell the animals for several hundreds of dollars apiece.

“Pennsylvania has turned into the puppy mill capital of the world,” said State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, who has proposed a bill to regulate breeders.

Commercial breeders say their purebreds are superior specimens that make better pets and healthier dogs than the average stray from an animal shelter. Farmers like Paul Haug, who keeps 75 female dogs on his Lancaster County farm in Vintage, say large-scale breeders are far more experienced and provide higher-quality animals than smaller kennels.

But opponents say commercial puppy breeders are pumping hundreds of thousands of sick, undernourished and unstable dogs into an already overpopulated market.

“They are going into this as if it were a livestock,” said Dotsie Keith of Doylestown, a Dalmatian breeder.

Stoltzfus did not answer knocks on his door during a visit earlier this year, and no telephone listing was available. Haug and other Lancaster County farmers who agreed to interviews declined to open their breeding areas to a reporter and photographer.

Puppy breeding long has been popular in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Oklahoma. Along with Pennsylvania, these are designated “puppy mill” states by the Humane Society of the United States.

In 1990, the Humane Society called for a national boycott of all puppies bred in Pennsylvania. But in the last year, the industry has grown 44%, from 72 to 104 federally licensed breeders. Sixty-five percent are in Lancaster, the nation’s most productive agricultural county.

Lancaster’s central location--30 miles west of Philadelphia--has attracted pet stores and brokers from New York to Washington, said Bob Reder, an investigator at the Humane Society’s mid-Atlantic regional office.

“It’s lucrative,” Reder said. “If you can buy a puppy for $35 and resell it for $500, and you can move 20 of them a week, you’ve got a pretty good thing.”

Reder said the county’s Amish are perfectly suited to add the chores of dog breeding to their routines.

“They have the time, and they have all this child labor too,” he said.

The incentive to make easy money has caused the breeders to cut corners, leading to a host of health and emotional problems for both puppies and their mothers, veterinarians and humane societies say.

“I don’t know a reputable dog breeder who makes a dime breeding dogs,” said Dr. Michael Moyer, director of the Chester County chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Pet stores rarely disclose the source of their dogs, meaning veterinarians are unable in all cases to blame large-scale breeders with certainty. But the doctors have seen problems with purebred dogs.

Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine in Philadelphia said purebreds brought into the hospital have a 30% higher rate of congenital defects or infection than stray dogs.

About 40% of the dogs taken to the Chester County shelter are purebreds, Moyer said. Many have parvo or distemper, the two most common viruses that kill young dogs. Others have unset fractures or hip disorders.

Other purebreds end up in shelters because the animals are too aggressive or afraid of people--a result of little human contact during their first few weeks of life, Moyer said.

“They need to be where they can hear the television, where they are picked up and played with,” said Keith, who has bred Dalmatians for 28 years. “They are not like a chicken that’s going to be slaughtered and come home in a little package.

“This is an animal you’re going to want to spend 10 or 12 years with.”

But Robert Yarnall, who oversees a training staff at Kimbertal Kennels in Chester County, said the societies are interested in putting the pet industry out of business so they can sell stray dogs.

“These people don’t want anyone to sell dogs,” Yarnall said. “They can, but no one else can.”

Yarnall denies that all large commercial breeders mistreat dogs. He cites Kimbertal’s policies of offering 12-month health guarantees and of selling only to individuals to ensure the animals go to good homes.

Kimbertal employs veterinarians, trainers and other staff to care for 100 females on breeding contracts. Unlike many breeding facilities, Kimbertal dogs spend most of their breeding lives and deliver their puppies at other people’s homes. They return to the kennel for periodic checkups.

Yarnall is head of the 1,900-member Pennsylvania Kennel Committee for Higher Ethics. He opposes a bill introduced this year by Greenleaf, a Republican from suburban Philadelphia, to force dog sellers to reimburse owners for veterinary expenses or the cost of the dog if puppies become ill or die.

“We don’t want the veterinarians to look at this as an open charge card that the breeder has to pay,” Yarnall said.

But Greenleaf said only a financial threat will induce breeders to raise healthier dogs. Many breeders, he said, probably would stop making any profits if they must raise healthier dogs.

“We’ll probably put them out of business,” he said.