April 6th, 2009 by admin2
Special thanks to Gail in CT, for this contribution!!
The current, April 13, edition of Newsweek has a superb article, by Suzanne Smalley, mostly about puppy mills, which is titled, “A (Designer) Dog’s Life, and sub-headed, “If the Obamas choose a hybrid, unethical breeders will try to cash in—and puppies are likely to suffer.”
The article opens with:
“The White County sheriff’s department noticed the stench from a mile up the road. By the time rescuers entered the series of sheds in Sparta, Tenn., some were forced to wear respirators. Inside each shed were scores of dogs in tiny cages, many covered in feces. The sheds reeked of urine and were so frigid the officers had to set up portable heaters to work inside. Authorities, who raided the farm in February after receiving tips from angry customers who’d purchased sick puppies, discovered 300 dogs on the three-acre property—many of them malnourished, mangy and infected by parasites. Some were housed a half dozen to a cage in near total darkness. Many of the pups were ‘designer dogs’—trendy new breeds like puggles (which result when a pug is bred with a beagle), Maltepoos (a Maltese-poodle mix) and Chipins (a Chihuahua-pinscher cross). ‘It’s market driven,’ says Melinda Merck, a forensic veterinarian who assisted with the Tennessee raid. ‘People just see a designer breed and
say, I’ve never heard of that dog but it sounds cute’. And for puppy mills like this one, designer dogs—many of which sell for more than $1,000 apiece—have become a huge business.
“The line connecting this canine hellhole to the White House is admittedly indirect. But any day now the Obama girls will bring home the puppy their father promised them in his election-night speech. In January, Obama told ABC News the family was strongly considering a Labradoodle, a Labrador-poodle hybrid that’s become especially popular among allergy sufferers—a group that includes Malia Obama. Michelle Obama has said she favors a purebred Portuguese water dog; a White House spokesperson won’t comment, but an announcement could come this week. No matter which breed the Obamas choose, animal-welfare advocates expect to see a “101 Dalmatians” effect: a sudden burst in popularity that results when a movie or a celebrity puts a spotlight on a particular dog, a phenomenon breeders try to capitalize on it by mass-producing similar dogs.”
The article has more descriptions of puppy mills, such as:
“Often, the animals are left outside during the frigid winters. Their feet slip painfully through the cages’ wire floors—and sometimes, so does their excrement, which rains on top of the dogs below when breeders stack cages to save space. Some of the dogs are nearly as big as their cages, leaving them little room to move. In front of the farms handwritten signs advertise the different breeds available. On these farms, hybrids like Labradoodles and puggles are plentiful.”
We read about the huge profits puppy mill owners can make, and legislative efforts to improve conditions. The lengthy article also gives us information about the unreliability of the designer dogs’ traits. The piece is accompanied by photos of dogs living in tiny stacked cages — those photos are also on line.
Please check out the article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/192478 and email it to your friends; magazines keep count of clicks and email forwards, and thereby learn which topics are of the most interest to readers. You can leave a comment on the web page, underneath the article. And please send an appreciative letter to the editor discussing the joys of adoption, so that Newsweek readers learn more about this topic in upcoming issues as they read your letters.
Newsweek takes letters at letters@newsweek.com
Please also remember to take the opportunity to speak up for shelter dogs any time you see the Obama dog story covered in your local media. Some smaller papers publish close to a hundred percent of letters they receive so why not take just a few minutes to spread the good word throughout your community?
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)
Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews and see a fun celeb-studded video and an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn’s new book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of 2008.”
