Say NO to Puppy Farming

TheSniffa.com encourages ALL our users to adopt "an ethical, safe and responsible practice" before considering buying (or selling) dogs or puppies. The information outlined below is a compilation of extracts that we hope will prompt all readers to operate responsibly when buying or selling puppies. Please take the time to read the articles below, they are extremely important! If you wish to do some further research on this subject there are some useful links at the bottom to get you started.

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What is Puppy Farming?

Hidden away from prying eyes, many thousands of female dogs are housed in agricultural barns and sheds, crudely adapted for the purpose of the mass breeding of dogs. Brood bitches exist solely to produce puppies, mere breeding machines for commercial gain by their owners. Breeding establishments operate throughout the UK, but since the mid fifties, West Wales has provided one of the major sources of puppies traded commercially throughout the world.

Born into a cold hostile world, tiny puppies, are hostage to fortune. Bred in atrocious conditions where their mothers often live a miserable existence in cramped, crude, unhygienic conditions, they are exposed to stress and disease. In West Wales, puppy farms have been established for over 40 years, but in the past decade, as demand has dramatically increased, the number of breeding establishments throughout Britain has risen alarming due to the existence of a large dealer network. They are the lynchpin of the trade, the middlemen and act as the link between breeder and pet shop. They collect and transport hundreds of puppies to pet retailers and commercial outlets throughout the UK. Many others are exported, mainly to the Far East, Japan, Hong Kong and China.

This trade in young pet animals is steeped in cruelty and abuse, from the breeder through transportation by the dealers and in to the pet outlets where puppies are treated as mere commodities by greedy profiteers. Behind their closed doors can lie a sordid tale of misery and neglect. The silent suffering of mans best friend is a sad indictment of a society which allows this to happen.

The abuse of dogs, cruelly used in the intensive rearing of pedigree puppies in mass-breeding establishments, is both shameful and shocking in our supposedly enlightened times.

Puppywatch is a small national charity founded in 1989 to document and expose the cruel and inhumane trade of puppy farming, where puppies are indiscriminately bred and sold on to the commercial pet trade.

Puppywatch is run entirely by volunteers and relies upon the goodwill of the public in the form of donations and fund raising events as its sole source of finance.

Source : http://www.puppywatch.org.uk/html/puppyfarming.html

Puppy Farm Awareness Day is Launched

Puppy Farm Awareness Day 19th September 2009: Puppy Love, Hope UK and Puppy Alert are working together to raise public awareness of puppy farming and the connection between puppy farms, licensed commercial breeders, dealers and pet shops. This will take place on 19th September 2009 to coincide with the Puppy Mill Awareness Day in the USA.

Puppy farming is no longer a cottage industry - a dog breeder owning a few dogs for the purpose of producing an occasional litter and selling the surplus puppies. It has now grown to a large commercial enterprise with dogs living in disused barns and puppies bred on a conveyor belt system more akin to factory farming than ethical dog breeding.

Source : http://blog.thepet.net/2009/06/19/worlds-largest-puppy-party/

More links of Interest