Amish Puppy Mills Make Front Page!!!

[MeganS]

There was a HUGE article on the Amish puppy mills on the front page in the newark star ledger today. There were some reporters who went undercover as potential buyers. They said that a little girl brought out 3 different breeds of puppies. She accidently dropped one and didn't even pick it up. She also had a yorkie in her hand and said that he would go for the most. I couldn't find the article anywhere on the internet, and its just too long to type in here. Just thought I'd let you all know! We are making some progress!!! I was so happy to see them educating the public! the pictures were just so sad...maybe now, some people will think twice about buying a pet store puppy.

[chechinmipo]

Good to know other people also care and are investigating. Thanks for sharing this information.

[waistfull]

Unfortunatley we have similiar practice around here. We have a farmers market and the Amish sell all kinds of blankets, pillow, produce, and yes puppies. When the pups get too old, they drop them off at the tri county animal shelter where they get a week to get adopted or they get put to sleep. I've seen countless beagles getting taken there. They can just drop them off in a pen outside and no questions asked.

[Fran42478]

Megan -

Thanks for sharing...

Here is the article...What a shame...

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....030.xml&coll=1

Its funny - When I told someone over the weekend how the Amish were into puppymills so big...They said "What, the Amish, How can that be they pride themselves on being so god like and loving" I am sending him this article right now!

Have a great day everyone!
XoXoXo
Fran and Sammi

[red98vett]

Megan - GREAT POST and that's so good to hear -

The Amish are such HYPOCRITES !!! They say they don't believe in Modern Conveniences liike ELECTRICITY - but they sure do use computers & the internet to sell Dogs ! What's up with THAT ?

They suck.

They consider dogs LIVESTOCK and nothing more - you KNOW dogs are mistreated and abused at Amish Puppy Mills....It's so so sad.

[txshopper73]

Amish puppymills are some of the worst that I've seen. It's disgusting how those poor dogs are treated. Believe me...they'll have to answer to this some day!

[Bentley&BitsysMom]

Gosh, I had no idea!!!

[joy606]

I got most of my "education" about puppy mills from this site for which I am so grateful. I always wanted to go Amish country, but now I have no desire. We always visit a Mennonite (sp) village when we go to TN, but now I will not go there either. Just recently I realized that in all the times we have gone there we have never seen a dog or cat. Thanks for the information folks and I am trying to educate everyone I come in contact with about puppy mills. Just this week I noticed that one of the Petland stores in our area has closed. Thanks also for the newspaper article. I AM SO AGAINST PUPPY MILLS!!!!!!!!!

[waistfull]

I would really like to do something about the Amish puppymills, I live in So. Maryland and we have many Amish farms here. I posted earlier about the Farmers Market we have here. Please give me some advice on helping these poor dogs out. Maybe I could contact local newspaper or is there a health department for dogs or something? I have actually went to the tri county animial shelter and saw numerous beagles that were too old to sell as puppies. I had previously been to the Farmer's Market and saw them for sale. They only get a week to adopted out at the shelter. What can Ido? Advice please!!

[mustangbee]

Thanks for sharing this information!!!!!
It's good to hear the word is getting out!

[i_love_my_yorki]

Originally Posted by Bentley&BitsysMom

Gosh, I had no idea!!!

I had no idea either

Omgosh.....I thought they were deeply religious people...& look what they are doing

what people will do for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
its the route of all evil

[Midge5353]

Thanks for informing us Megan. I did a search on the internet and I think I found the article: http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....030.xml&coll=1

A NEW CROP FOR THE AMISH
Pennsylvania farmers have found raising puppies is a lucrative business, but they're reaping an increasingly bitter harvest of cruelty charges

LANCASTER, Pa. -- A few scattered pumpkins dot the muddy fields where bearded men in wide- brimmed hats lead teams of shaggy plow horses tilling the soil.

The scent of cows rides a northern breeze that whips white bonnets, dark pants and black jackets on front-yard clotheslines.

It is autumn in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Amish country, and the fields that sustain the simple lifestyle are mostly bare.

But one crop -- the most important crop to some -- remains. Puppies.

"They're more expensive now because of Christmas coming up," said a bonneted young girl, barely 10, who cheerfully greeted visitors to her picturesque Ronks dairy farm last week. "You want a better price, you come back in the summer when things are slower."

She then disappeared into a large red barn and emerged with three squirming puppies, each a different breed. Before she could cross the dusty driveway, one spilled from her arms, tumbling over her white apron to the edge of her long, gray skirt.

"That's a Boston terrier," she said, as the loose pup nipped at her black, high-top shoes.

"This one is a bichon," she motioned to the pups still in her arms, "and this is a Yorkie. ... He's going to cost the most. You can probably have him for $1,300."

Bred for bulk and retail sale, puppies are a growing cash crop for hundreds of farmers in and around idyllic Lancaster County, where Amish and Mennonite settlers from Switzerland and Germany arrived in the early 1700s in search of religious freedom.

For farmers, a big crop of dogs can gross up to $500,000 annually, with successful operations netting six figures.

For critics, the men in the suspenders and bushy beards are concealing a cruel and massive form of factory farming and masking it behind the quaint, simple and pure image of the Amish culture. They so badly want the kennels shut down, they have taken their fight to Congress, where a Senate subcommittee heard testimony two weeks ago.

"Amish country is synonymous with puppy mills, and Lancaster County is the capital of Pennsylvania puppy mills, with more than 200 kennels," said Libby Williams, founder of New Jersey Consumers Against Pet Shop Abuse. "Dogs ... should not be treated like chickens, penned up in coops for their entire lives just to breed."

It's no accident that Garden State activists are in the middle of the debate, given that Lancaster County sits just 70 miles from the New Jersey border.

"Pennsylvania is the main source (of dogs to New Jersey pet shops), and farmers in Amish country are the major suppliers," said Stuart Rhodes, president of the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "And right now, it's going on Christmastime, so business is booming.

"Everybody wants a puppy."

THE PUPPIES
At a Parkesburg pasture known to kennel authorities as Betty's Boxers, the pups last week were warm and out of sight at what otherwise operates as a dairy farm.

"They're only 4 weeks old," said Betty Stoltzfus, showing visitors around her small operation. Her puppies, she explained, are still three weeks shy of the age when they can legally be sold. But, she optimistically added, "they'll be ready before Christmas."

The little ones make this a downtime for her breeding stock -- 10 yapping, growling female boxers in wire pens at the front of the property. They now are the concern of Betty's 10-year-old son, Marvin.

A few miles up a mountain, back in the town of Ronks, the little girl in the bonnet and her family have a much larger operation on their hands.

Activists contend more than 200,000 puppies are churned out annually in and around Lancaster County, and the farm where the little girl greets visitors had hundreds of older dogs secluded behind the main barn last week.

The dogs were quiet until a farm hand walked between two buildings and triggered howling and yapping. Some of the pack, perhaps 60 fluffy white dogs, were tucked in rabbit hutches stacked a story high and several dozen feet across.

Scores of others filled two more rows of hutches, dozens of pens stacked two-high on both sides of an alley way. The sight of human visitors ignited another fury of yelps, and the dogs pawed their mesh cages -- some pressing their black noses through the holes.

Some were bichons, others were Malteses. All were the small, playful and popular breeds that bring the farm --known as Clearview Kennel -- a steady income.

THE LAW
The Pennsylvania Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement lists 243 kennels in Lancaster County, and about 50 hold federal licenses to sell entire litters to brokers. Hundreds more are scattered in surrounding farm counties.

"The vast majority of kennels, and we have about 2,500 in Pennsylvania ... go through a year without receiving citations, but there are those where we do find violations," said Mary Bender, director of the dog bureau.

Puppy Love, a kennel at the southern end of Lancaster County that sells more than 1,000 puppies a year, was labeled one of the most notorious by the state Attorney General's Office earlier this year. In a lawsuit, the state charged customers bought dogs that died within 48 hours of purchase.

The case was settled in May, when owners Joyce and Raymond Stoltzfus (no relation to Betty Stoltzfus) agreed to pay more than $75,000 in fines and restitution. The money reimbursed 171 customers in seven states for veterinary bills.

Under the settlement, Puppy Love, now known as CC Pets, must have every dog tested and treated by a veterinarian -- a measure that exceeds existing state law for other kennels. (Pennsylvania law requires only that kennels be inspected once a year, and that the dogs be keep "healthy and free of disease," Bender said.)

The worst puppy mills, according to Williams and Humane Society investigators, pen up young females and force them to mate from their first day in heat. They then mate every time they're in heat until they grow too old to produce litters.

That means churning out litters twice a year, maybe for up to seven years, and often with some unhealthy results, said Bob Reder, who conducted undercover puppy mill probes for the Humane Society throughout the 1990s.

"To breed a dog properly requires a medical checkup to see if the animal is healthy enough to give birth to healthy litters. That is never done by these breeders. They breed every dog, so you get sick offspring" said Pamela Shot, a Morris County veterinarian and activist.

She cited congenital defects, such as bad hips and poor eyesight, and allergies that develop years later. Temperament problems also occur.

In response to problem breeders, New Jersey and Pennsylvania adopted "Puppy Lemon Laws." The lawsuit against Puppy Love was based on such a law.

The lemon law requires anyone who sells a sick dog to cover costs and veterinary expenses of buyers, according to Nina Austenberg of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the Humane Society of the United States.

But she said the laws do little to solve health problems that develop a year or more after a purchase, and they do not address the proliferation of unwanted pets caused by puppy mills. The bulk of the nearly 48,000 dogs landing in New Jersey shelters annually, about 14,000 of which end up euthanized, comes from puppy mills, Austenberg said.

"The point is, we don't need more domestic pets; we don't need people churning out hundreds and thousands of dogs," she added.

[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."