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By Douglas McCulloch
Hometown Weekly Staff
A fifth grade class at the Deerfield School was recently given an assignment to write a persuasive essay arguing a particular side of a controversial issue. The students were required to research the issue online, develop arguments to support their position, and address potential counter-arguments that could arise from their points.
The students submitted their essays to the Hometown Weekly in the hopes of seeing their essays published. For the next several weeks, we will be publishing several essays, chosen at random, to highlight the accomplishments of the talented writers who submitted letters to the Hometown Weekly.
The second essay picked, written by Cara McManus, argues that puppy mills should be illegal.
Puppy mills should be illegal
By Cara McManus
Imagine that you are walking into a puppy mill. You see two more puppies crammed into a small cage, covered in scabs. They feebly wave a swollen paw in the air as you walk by, as if saying, “Help me, please.”
Their big sad eyes look up at you. They are full of lesions. Some have collars so tight that they have been embedded in their necks. The food bowls are full of bugs and contaminated with germs. You walk outside and see a man drowning a dog in a bucket. The man tells you that the dog was a breeding dog and that she was too sick to produce puppies anymore.
This is the horror that goes on in puppy mills.
Most people know that dogs are mistreated in puppy mills, but most don’t know how bad it really is. One point to prove this is that some poppies are found with bleeding or swollen paws from their feet falling through the poorly-built wire cages.
There is no climate control or protection for the animals from the harsh weather conditions in these small wire cages. Some are also found with severe tooth decay, dehydration and eyes full of lesions which often leads to blindness. Because of all the illnesses, many animals are in need of medical care and most poppy mills have no veterinary care. It is hard to imagine that a place breeding millions of puppies would not even have a vet to help out.
In many puppy mills they do not practice humane euthanasia because there is no vet there. Dogs are killed in cruel ways including drowning and shooting because it does not cost as much money. If this was your dog, wouldn’t you want things to change?
Those are just some of the ways that dogs are treated badly in puppy mills. Female dogs are also being mistreated after their “job” is done. Mothers are bred at every heat cycle with little to no time to recover in between litters. Once the female is so sick from giving birth to many puppies she is often killed or abandoned into the wild.
Also, there are at least 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S., but only 3,000 are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so only 3,000 have laws about how many times a female dog can be bred.
Lastly, with limited or no regulations or enforcement, puppy mills have no cleanup control. This means that dogs can be living in urine or feces for indefinite periods of time before someone notices. That would be a terrible environment for females to give birth in.
Another argument against puppy mills is that too many puppies are being produced. It is estimated by the ASPCA that there are over 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. and 2.11 million puppies are bred each year in them. That’s a lot of puppies.
Also, ever year in America 2.11 million puppies are sold to pet stores while out of the 7.6 million animals that enter shelters ever year, 3 million are being killed because they do not have enough room. Shelters are killing more than puppy mills are producing.
It is impossible to determine how many stray dogs live in the US but many of these dogs come from puppy mills. In 2007 the number of dogs involved in animal abuse was 64.5%. The number of animals that die in the US from cruelty, neglect and exploitation is 3 million. By producing so many poppies puppy mills are giving more people the chance to abuse animals.
Some people might disagree with my points and they might think, all puppy mills need to do is clean up their act by providing better food, water care and more. But I disagree. I disagree because that is never going to happen. People have been trying to change the ways of puppy mills for years, but it never works.
Besides, puppy mills need to do a lot more than just clean up their acts. For example, out of 10,000 puppy mills in the United States, fewer than 3,000 are approved by the Department of Agriculture. If puppies could speak, they would agree with me. But they can’t because they are dying every day. We must be the ones to speak for them.
Could you imagine a world where there were no puppy mills? A world where puppies were bred properly and treated very kindly? Puppies would have veterinary care and good food. And where female dogs only gave birth once in a lifetime so they could have happy and healthy pups. This is what the world could be like without abusive and atrocious puppy mills. Imagine that world.
