25% of all shelter animals are pedigree...spend your money responsibly...NOT to profit puppy or kitten millers!

What is a Puppy or Kitten Mill?

The information below details an industry that pervades our country.
We ask that responsible citizens familiarize themselves with the practices of these mills and vow to boycott such ventures by adopting from your local shelter.

• If you know persons who hold themselves out as "pet lovers," yet constantly offer young puppies or kittens for sale
• If the litters are within weeks of each other (i.e., one litter seven weeks old and another litter five weeks old)
• If you are not permitted to see the mother, or she appears exhausted and listless
• If there are several nursing animals, overwhelmed and apathetic
• If there are several young litters, scrabbling in dirty pens

These are signs of a puppy or kitten mill.

Puppy or kitten millers indiscriminately exploit and breed females again and again, to the detriment of the mother's health and the subsequent deterioration of her milk and of the litters she is forced to produce.

If the mother dies, her body is tossed and another breeding machine is substituted. Most of these parent animals spend their brief, uncomfortable lives in extremely cramped, ill-kept quarters with little human interaction, since their owner's only purpose for them is to reproduce living things to sell. They never know cuddling, praise, or interaction with anything but nursing litters.

In contrast, reputable, professional breeders...

• NEVER breed a female animal within months after she has delivered a litter.
• NEVER peddle puppies or kittens from a pick-up in a parking lot, and seldom advertise their litters, as they have strict criteria for placement.
• NEVER utilize their own children to peddle the animals. ("Oh, look at the cute kid with the adorable puppy!")

The only way to shut down a puppy or kitten mill is to cut off its cash flow, because these humans are exploiting animals for one reason: money.

Please don't buy from a puppy or kitten mill. If you want to give some animal a loving home, rescue the exhausted mother dog or cat from her miserable existence and have her humanely spayed to end her captivity.

Or, adopt from our local shelter. That's where puppy and kitten millers dump the animals they aren't able to peddle ­ it's too expensive to keep and feed them.