Know where your puppy came from

Like many families shopping for a pet, Brooklyn resident Karen Violante knew exactly what she wanted: an American Kennel Club-registered smooth-coat Chihuahua.

So she bought one from a breeder who advertised pups for sale online. When Minny arrived in New York after transport from Missouri, she was hardly what Violante had in mind. Minny was underweight, had two sets of teeth and a severe ear infection. Due to her dental issues, Minny was hand-fed until her teeth were repaired.

Thanks to the dedicated care of the Violante family, Minny eventually recovered, but it wasn’t easy. “This puppy suffered, and I feel I was lied to and robbed,” Violante told The Humane Society of the United States. Violante said she’d believed the papers she received showing Minny’s AKC registration meant that Minny came from a reputable breeder.

Unfortunately, Violante’s experience is common. As she learned, AKC registration is neither a health guarantee nor a promise that a dog does not come from a puppy mill — a large, inhumane breeding facility where the parent dogs may spend their entire lives in tiny, filthy, wirefloored cages, often stacked one on top of the other and exposed to the extremes of weather.

To let consumers know that AKC registration doesn’t indicate responsible breeding, my organization has released a report detailing the AKC’s shameful connections to puppy mills, some so deplorable that authorities removed all of the dogs.

But the AKC’s allegiance to puppy mills doesn’t stop at profiting from selling registration papers to high-volume, low-compassion puppy mills. It extends to thwarting attempts at the passage of laws that would have protected dogs across the nation.

Over the past five years, the New York City-based AKC has opposed more than 80 different state bills and local ordinances, including six in New York, designed to provide stronger protections for dogs.

The HSUS informs prospective buyers of dogs and puppies so that they can avoid the pitfall of buying from a puppy mill, and we push for legislation to protect dogs.

We recommend adopting your new best friend from a local shelter or rescue group. But for people who choose to purchase dogs online, like the Violante family, it’s caveat emptor — let the buyer beware. Families receive sick puppies from mills and often spend thousands of dollars nursing the pups back to health, or worse.

To combat this cruelty, the federal Department of Agriculture has proposed a rule that will hold large-scale breeders who sell over the Internet accountable for providing basic humane standards for shelter, care and exercise. It signals hope for the millions of dogs who suffer in puppy mills across the country — and it means consumers are less likely to be misled.

But once again, who has rallied against this common-sense proposal? AKC chairman Alan Kalter described it as an “onerous” measure. But what is onerous about requiring transparency for consumers and the bare minimum of care standards for breeding dogs?

There is a very important distinction between responsible breeders and reckless breeders. The reputable ones recognize that oversight of the commercial dogbreeding industry can help weed out the bad actors who value profits over the welfare of their dogs.

As the owner of one German shepherd kennel told the Richmond County Daily Journal in reference to a proposed law governing commercial dog breeding in North Carolina, “If you have nothing to hide, then the legislation shouldn’t bother you.”

The AKC has failed to protect the dogs it claims to champion. The time has come for the AKC to address the issue of animal suffering head-on and stop aligning itself with the disreputable puppy mill industry.

Adoption is the best option