Prisoners for profit 

Puppy mills are commercial mass dog-breeding facilities that produce as many puppies as possible for as little investment as possible.

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It's standard practice for puppy mills to keep animals in cramped, crude, and filthy conditions without proper veterinary care or socialization. 

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Puppy-mill kennels can consist of anything from small cages made of wood and wire mesh to tractor-trailer cabs or simply chains attached to trees, where mother dogs and puppies spend every day outdoors in the same small patch of dirt in all types of weather.



Sometimes dogs subsist in tiny cages, often with filth from one dog pouring through the cage floor onto the poor animal underneath it. Their eyes are scalded out by the ammonia in the urine and the pads of their paws are cut on the wire mesh.

Infected, hungry and in pain they produce puppies for several years. After they're no longer profitable, these dogs are simply discarded or they are shot, abandoned or sold to someone who will try to get "one more litter out of her.”



Undercover investigations of puppy mills have revealed that dogs often had no bedding or protection from the cold or heat and no regular veterinary care even when they were ill. Health conditions such as crusty, oozing eyes, raging ear infections, mange that turned their skin into a mass of red scabs, and abscessed feet from the unforgiving wire floors all were ignored or inadequately treated. Investigators have observed dogs circling frantically in their small cages and pacing ceaselessly back and forth, oblivious to anything around them—their only way of coping with despair.



Since puppy mills breed dogs for quantity, not quality, genetic defects are rampant. These can include physical problems that require costly veterinary treatment as well as personality disorders that often frustrate guardians into abandoning their dogs.



Puppy mills are adding tens of thousands of dogs and cats each year to the pet-overpopulation that fills our animal shelters. With millions of unwanted dogs and cats (including purebreds) dying every year in animal shelters of being abandoned, there is simply no reason for animals to be bred and sold for the pet-shop trade (PETA).

The battery farming of dogs is a cruel and abusive industry. It is known as ‘puppy farming’ but that expression does little to describe the true horrors that lie behind the doors of barns, sheds, caravans, and any number of inappropriate buildings across Wales.

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Those who perpetuate this vile trade argue that it is a viable form of farm diversity. It isn’t. The people who farm dogs in this way know nothing about dogs and in the words of one farmer they see them as  just like any other crop.



They also refer to their captives as ‘livestock’. They aren’t. They are domestic companion animals who are afforded less respect than the sheep, cattle or pigs on those same farms.



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If you’ve had the privilege of providing a home for a rescued ex breeding bitch or stud dog, you will know how heartbreaking it is to see them discover grass for the first time. To experience sunshine. To have a warm, clean bed and fresh water. And most of all, to experience human compassion, companionship and affection. Watching a dog learning how to be a dog when half of his or her liafe has been spent living in filth and fear is something you never forget.



Text by C.A.R.I.A.D.