To me - a true puppy mill is a facility where dogs are housed in cages - sometimes outside(which makes me sick) bred over and over - have no human contact and basically are used till they're no value to the Miller. I don't think there are ANY 'good' puppy mills - in my opinion
all are awful. Puppies are sold to Pet Stores like Pet Land - or auctioned off - and often shipped all around the country -
A BYB with alot of red flags is to me a step up but maybe not in some cases -they don't operate on the large scale a mill does and hopefully live in better conditions than puppy mill dogs do - but they're also used as a source of income and don't get much socialization and are often seen only as money makers for the BYB/Kennel owner.