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Thanks so much for your reply Kellie... yes I totally see what you are saying about avoiding a protest, moving on to another store and whatnot.

Do you think that average people, new buyers...the general public, know that almost all the puppies in the store come from terrible breeding situations? How can I help to get the word out to average consumers? And if I did, do you think a siginificant number of uninitiated puppy buyers would not buy from a pet store if they knew this? (These aren't rhetorical questions!)

http://www.prisonersofgreed.org/Kennel-summary.html

Hey Sarah and CD.

Thanks for replying!

I was thinking of placing ads in local papers. What about a big ad in the pet classifieds of the cities that are just south of us? Many people come up from Massachusetts to shop here because of the tax break. Sarah, could you refer me to someone who could help me tailor my message and design it? The big sign that Mainline Animal Rescue put up to get Oprah's attention makes me wonder about that too. I assume the signs around these parts aren't as pricey as that one in where was it, downtown Chicago?

The two stores that motivated this post are a case of light and dark. The puppies in dark are sad and listless, the place stinks.. the puppies are in the back of a huge wretched privately owned pet supply store. Even I wanted to rescue them. There was a very large as in big not fat young woman tending to them there. I asked her, "Where do your puppies come from?" First she said, "local breeders" stopped herself and said, "out of state." I said, "From the Hunte Corporation?" She confirmed this, and I said, "You know they come from puppy mills, right?" She said, "Some of them do." In retrospect, I would imagine that they buy from local small scale bybs and mills here in NH. As I left that place, I passed two male employees beelining back to the puppies... , I'm assuming they were heading back to keep an eye on the radical. They didn't spare a glance for the chubby middle aged woman who was making it for the front door and fresh air.

The light was a very nice little store. As I get older, I start to believe in fate more and more. It would have been much more convenient for me to have found another hellhole. No such luck. :P In this place, I pretended to be buying for my 13 year old granddaughter.

I was met by a nice woman and her nice but tough looking husband who was watching over the puppies and holding one and petting it. This was long haired Chihuahua who looked very fearful and sad. In the window were 2 smooth chi pups and in the center of the room 3 Plexiglas cases with a bichon and a lhasapoo, some sort of brussels griffon mix (this pup looked totally shell-shocked) ... he was in with the chi the man was holding... and on the end, more chihuahuas. The shop was clean and bright and smelled great. The pups were on immaculate bedding (I think I was giving off a ton of dog person vibes because at one point the woman confided in me that she wasn't really happy with that bedding and looking for something else. I actually had to stop myself from starting to brainstorm with her ). Lots of toys and little outfits to dress the pups in hanging on the walls.

From the responses I got from the woman and her husband (soon their very nice young daughter came out smiling and proud of her mother and their cute puppies) it seems to me that she is trying very hard to believe that she isn't doing wrong. Her eyes have that look though. I think she knows she's complicit in bad stuff. She told me that she is a very discriminating buyer... searches the web for the best source of puppies. She showed me the "papers" of the Bichon. He is from a (big surprise incoming) fine breeder in Kansas. She assured me that they come in on air ride trucks (big emphasis on "air ride.") I asked how they were vetted, and she told me that a vet from one of the popular animal hospitals in town had done it, but that she had shopped around and gotten a better price from a vet north of Manchester. I assume that the local vet got some pressure from local dog folks, but who knows. Just on an interesting side note... the minute I walked into the store the husband asked me if he had seen me in there before. I had stopped when they were closed and looked over the storefront. I assume they know that there are matronly women lurking around town who are struggling against the impulse to spray paint STOP PUPPY MILLS NOW on their window, so security cameras ftw.

I asked them what they would do with the puppies today, while the shop was closed and they said the pups would stay there in the shop. Lol their clean pink facade took me in too. I had this wishful thinking going where they took the pups home with them. I'm just starting to process my thoughts and feeling regarding this pet shop. I'm actually wondering if something positive might be done with this woman. Is this crazy?

Well,

I think if there weren't puppy mills and the small breed puppies they produced being sold through pet stores there would be A LOT more room for breeders who breed occasionally. I wouldn't ever say that bybs are good although generally they might be more humane to the mothers and the puppies. Any breeder who doesn't place her puppies carefully, with spay and neuter contracts attached for example is contributing to the domestic pet population explosion and to the epidemic of problems we are seeing with regard to aggresssion, cruelty and pet abandonment when dogs are placed poorly.

What do you define as "knowing about puppy mills?" Do you think that most people know about them like.... I know about the genocide that has taken place in the Sudan? I know it happened but I have never listened to or even read detailed accounts of the atrocities there. Do you think that people have an informed, detailed knowledge of the insane level of cruelty that goes on in mills?

I don't think I understand your use of the term. Backyard breeders are to me, people who have an unspayed bitch which either is bred by accident or purposely but with no substantive knowledge of the parents. Would you agree with that?

People who breed consciously and with a mind to the health and the overall quality of the pups they produce are simply breeders. I know a lot of people use the term hobby breeder, but to me hobby breeders are simply breeders who breed infrequently and usually only to produce a dog for themselves at the cost of being responsible for the litter for a lifetime. I admire such breeders very much. Breeders can be proud of what they produce, even if other people might question the quality of their puppies, no one is going to say such a breeder didn't do her best.