[Midge5353]

THE MONEY
Whether labeled kennels or puppy mills, the driving force behind dog farms is money.

"It's a good income. It's a great income, no doubt about that, and it helps a lot," said John Stoltzfus, Betty's husband, grabbing his dark suspenders as he leaned inside the doorway of his barn late Tuesday afternoon.

He offered no apologies for the reddish boxers that barked and darted around his wire dog-runs. They turn out most of the 100 to 150 puppies he and Betty sell annually, for $600 a piece.

"But this is no puppy mill. You can't call this a puppy mill," Stoltzfus said, stroking his gray, straw- like beard with thick hands, callused by a lifetime of farm work.

"These dogs have human contact, they are out in the open air, they can run. They aren't penned up all the time in chicken coops, and they have names," he said.

Of course, he added, not every kennel here is run this way.

"Some places ... may have a little going on in a field, something planted. Maybe a few dairy cows. But you go there, and you see those real puppy mills -- dogs in cages stacked up high. Hundreds of them," Stoltzfus said.

Reder, the Humane Society investigator, called the dogs a "cash crop" for farmers.

"Why work from dawn to dusk plowing 50 acres every day when you can make the same money just by setting up an old trailer on half an acre and raising hundreds of dogs?" he asked.

As such, more Amish breeders are treating it like a volume business and selling entire litters to pet shops or brokers who act as middlemen. For the biggest breeders, Williams and Reder said, a dog's average price can drop to $50-$500, depending on breed and the broker's cut.

John Stoltzfus, who prefers selling directly to the public, wouldn't reveal his overhead costs. But he did say it wasn't much -- just the price of dog food and an occasional veterinarian visit when a dog gets sick.

Jonas Beiler also sells directly to the public from his hilltop dairy farm in nearby Narvon. Overlooking a one-room Amish school and playground, where boys and girls tossed around a baseball last week, he said he gets $850 for each of his Labrador puppies.

"I mainly sell to a Connecticut woman. She already bought these," he explained of the two dozen adult, males howling from their pens behind his barn.

Nearby, crouched in four wooden rabbit hutches, three of four breeding females nursed litters of yellow and chocolate Labs. They, too, already were sold.

"Come back in three weeks and I might have some," Beiler said.

Like most dog farms, his home is tucked on a winding country road. But the kennels do advertise in newspapers and on the Internet.

Yes. The simple farmers of Amish country are online -- or at least working with outside partners who advertise their puppy crops on Web sites.

Daniel and Verna Esh, whose daughter greeted visitors at Clearview Kennel last week in Ronks, declined to be interview for this story, but photographs of their puppies grace several Web sites touting "cute Yorkies," "cute bichons," "cute pugs," and "cute Maltese."

THE FUTURE
Like the Eshes, most farmers didn't want to talk about their dogs, particularly now that protests have forced their operations to be licensed and inspected for health and abuse violations by county, state and federal agencies.

"Folks really don't like to talk about it much because there just doesn't seem to be any point to it. Some of these animal people drive through Lancaster County and call everything they see a puppy mill," said Stoltzfus, his wide hat perched on the back of his head.

The pressure for additional reforms continues.

Two weeks ago, during the U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on a bill introduced by two Pennsylvania senators, animal rights advocates told horror stories about breeding operations across the county.

The legislation would add retail dog operations to the licensing and inspection authority of the United States Department of Agriculture, which already regulates wholesale dog sales. Called the Pet Animal Welfare Statute of 2005, or PAWS, the activists behind it are pushing for government oversight of everything from Stoltzfus' front-yard dogs to the Internet sales of Clearview.

Nancy Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Humane Society in Washington, D.C., said the "legislation has tremendous support on both sides of the aisle." A new draft, which will incorporate modifications recommended by activists and kennel operators during the hearings, is expected to be presented soon to the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The commotion has sent most large kennel operations into their barns, or behind them, and out of sight.

Nathan Myer's farm in Lititz is no exception.

His golden retrievers are tucked into stacks of rabbit hutches and secluded in a two-story cement building at the end of his driveway, well off the front road.

While out of sight, his operations are hardly out of mind.

Just a mile down the winding road, a large lawn sign offers a protest: "No More Puppymills."

It is posted outside an upscale cul-de-sac of stone houses, a few houses among the hundreds going up across Amish country.

The signs are the work of a new local organization called unitedagainstpuppymills.com. It was formed in March by new residents.

To the farmers, it is one more intrusion into a world where dogs are viewed no differently than cows, chickens or any other livestock.

"They (the outsiders) see their animals like people, give them the run of the house and let them jump on the bed at night -- and that's fine," John Stoltzfus said. "I've nothing against that. But out here, we're farmers, and our animals are animals."