Puppy mills are commercial breeders who have kennels that are in substandard conditions. The dogs are often left in the in a small cage their entire life, and get no exercise or grooming. Their hair is so matted it grows to skin and this is very painful. The bottom of the cage is often wire so they have to poop and pee right in the spot they live, and this goes against most dog's nature, the wire bottoms allows body fluids to go beneath the cage, but this area is seldom cleaned, and the smell is quite horrible, especially to dog's sensitive noses, and the wire is hard on their feet. The nails are often so long that the have curled and have grown into pads of feet. They get little vet care during pregnancy and whelping, and if sick, many millers just let them suffer and die because it's cheaper than vet care. In most mills, the dogs have never had any real human contact, and have been found with limbs chewed off because cages are kept so close to each other. To control barking and keep authorities from investigating, a rod is often shoved down their throats at an attempt at debarking. Dogs that have outlived their usefulness are often shot or killed in even less humane ways.
Not all commercial kennels are puppy mills, and I hate to see the words used interchangeably, it is possible to have a commercial kennel where the dogs are treated humanly, and have regular vet care, and access to food and water at all time, and are exercised. Many states are attempting to improve kennel condition laws, but commercial breeders have a powerful lobby and are fighting this legislation, and sending out propaganda to small breeders and using scare tactics to get them on their side, always saying that the legislation will affect the small breeder or show breeder, so then good breeders fight the legislation as well.
You can put anything in your contract you want, but what will you do if someone ignores it, do you say what the punishment will be? How do you enforce it? In my opinion, good breeders have a clause in their contracts stating that the dog will be sold with limited registration, meaning that that the dog comes with no breeding right, this protects the dog somewhat, if it was an AKC dog, but millers have just turned to unethical registries such as the CKC or APRI that will register a dog without breeding rights. Some breeders have taken this a step further and have all dogs neutered/spayed before selling them, and unfortunately, this is the only way to protect them against unethical breeding. It is much more likely that your dogs will go to some backyard breeder rather than a puppy mill. Mills tend to produce their own breeding dogs, or buy them at auctions. While a backyard breeder isn't as likely to treat the dogs so poorly, and may allow them to live in the house, they don't understand that not all purebreds should be bred, and we have many more BYB's than breeders who breed to standard, so this means that eventually the Yorkie won't look much like a Yorkie, and health risks are being passed in huge numbers because BYB's or millers don't do health screening. So I'd admire you for trying to protect your dog's offspring from the miller, it's also important to protect the breed as a whole from going to a backyard breeder. Choosing a proper home for your dog's offspring, is one of the most important things you can do for the breed, I would place the dogs in "pet only" homes. |