Puppy Mills

When I was a kid my family moved to a bigger house and we decided that the best thing to make that house a home would be a puppy. So, my family looked through the newspapers for people selling dogs. We found an add for a place not too far from our house that was selling dogs for cheap to good homes. I remember being excited to get there and see all the cute dogs, to pick one out and name it. My excitement turned to disgust when we got there and saw the horrible conditions that the dogs were living in.

There were at least five dogs to one small cadge. The noises they were making were horrible, it was like they were dying and I suppose they were, slowly but surely. It was obvious that these animals were miserable and the people who ran this puppy mill didn't seem to think anything of it. They apologized to my parents, saying that there usually weren't so many dogs, that they sold to pet stores and eventually a good number of the dogs would be off to good homes. I guess my parents bought that story, because we didn't get right back in the car and go home. We actually picked out a dog. It was a bit skittish, probably from being in cadged for so long, but once it was allowed to run around for a few minutes everything seemed normal. We paid the woman, got in the car, and drove home.

We didn't make it ten minutes down the road before my mother found lesions on the dogs mouth and paws from trying to claw its way out of the cadge. It had more ticks on it than I can count and was too skinny from not being fed properly. My parents were horrified by the way this dog had been treated, but they were more concerned with the fact that they had spent money for this dog that was clearly not healthy and would need more maintainable than they felt they could afford. So we took the dog back and demanded our money. I cried the whole way home and begged my parents to call animal control and report the puppy mill, but they refused, saying that it was not their place to do so.

I was upset when this happened, but now I am even more disgusted by the actions of my parents. They seem to love animals, but they sit and by and watch them be tortured like that simply because they think that it's none of their business to interfere with the raising of animals that are not theirs. I wonder if they would feel the same way about children being abused in their homes. I doubt it, and this is a point that I have often tried to bring to their attention but they get too defensive to have a rational conversation.

In relation to this week's Q&A I am prompted to ask, if animals are considered property (as my parents considered this puppy) when is it appropriate to step in try to change deplorable conditions when we see them and when is it appropriate to leave it alone, to insist that people should have more control over their property than those on the outside?