Animal abuse is a felony here in WA State.
PAWS: Report Animal Cruelty It has been for awhile. We also have new laws just gone into effect that help stop puppy mills.
We don't have a big problem with mills here like some states. Now the most you can have (dogs) is 50. This is only 1 of many things they changed in the laws.
The only way to put a stop to mills is to close all commercial kennels. This is the way I see it anyhow. The USDA does NOT do their job, they allow the complaints to come in and ignore them.
They allow these breeders to keep breeding hundreds of puppies a year and let them get away with infractions by not shutting them down. Instead they tell them to fix it and then later they will come back out. problem might be fixed or it might not, but they don't shut them down.
They don't play that game here, they are shut down, charged with animal cruelty and have all dogs taken away and they rarely give any back.
Unfortunately people are turning in small hobby breeders who may only have a few dogs. To many people here are what we call animal rights activists/terrorists because they do illegal things to get people in trouble, or try to.
They go after these small breeders because they think anyone who breeds is a puppy mill. And they can get into their homes easier. it's hard to get access to commercial breeders because they wont let people come visit the animals.
We just had a raid out my way not to long ago, the humane society doesn't do these things here, it is done by animal control who is run by the county and cities. Most humane societies are privately owned, most people don't know that.
They are having to shut down a few HS here because of no money to run them. of course the HSUS doesn't give any of the donations they get to other humane societies, and they should.
these HS that are closing have been giving away dogs to get them adopted.