The problem with puppy mill puppies

I used to sell puppy mill puppies at my store. I would get them at 8 weeks old because that is when they are cutest. I found out later that to get puppies by that age, they had to have been taken from their moms by 4 to 6 weeks old, before having healthy immune systems and socialization skills.

From the mills, they go to broker facilities where they are given their first puppy shots. Then they are put back on a truck and hauled to multiple states over many days for delivery. By the time the truck got to my store, three or four of the puppies I had ordered would be missing from the truck and the response was always, “they were sick so we left them behind,” but I’m sure they died en route due to the trauma. I would go inside the truck and look at the puppies through the peep holes in the cages. I chose the ones I wanted. The truck driver would offer me the sicker ones at a reduced price just to get rid of them. I can only imagine what happened to the ones that weren’t bought off the truck. I would get instructions on how to medicate the puppies to make them temporarily feel and look better so that they would sell quickly once in the store.

Almost always, puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills, where they are inbred. They have a very high risk of dying from genetic defects later on in life. The pet store, however, is off the hook for this after a year, before the genetic deficiencies appear. I stopped selling puppy mill puppies at my pet store because I wanted to do the right and humane thing. Now, I help dogs and cats from the animal shelters find homes.

Rene Karapetian

Burbank