Are you tempted to buy that cute puppy in the pet store window? Do you want to save the pet store puppies by taking them all home? Are you against what's called a "Puppy Mill"?

If your answer is yes to any of these questions, YOU NEED TO STAY AWAY FROM PET STORES that sell puppies and kittens.

Why you ask? 

Because most if not all pet stores acquire their puppies from what is called a puppy mill. Puppy mills are horrible places. Not a place you as an animal lover would ever want to see a beloved pet sentenced to.

Puppy mills are breeders that have many dogs that they breed over and over again with no regard for quality and health. Often the dogs and puppies are kept in deplorable conditions. Cages stacked on top of each other, filled with urine and feces. Puppies and dogs sick and starving, lacking proper veterinary care, proper diet and exercise. This is just touching on what conditions are like in puppy mills.

Oh, so your local pet store says they don't get their dogs from puppy mills? Only from reputable breeders? Well think for a minute, would a reputable breeder, with only concern for producing healthy pups with proper conformation sacrifice their litter of puppies to a pet store? Never knowing what kind of homes they are going to? Whether or not they will be properly spayed or neutered? No, I don't think so!

I know its a hard thing to do to resist that cute puppy-dog face in the local pet store. But everyone that buys a puppy from a pet store, is inadvertently promoting puppy mills. None of us wants to do that! But every puppy sold makes room for another puppy to arrive from the puppy mills.

So please stay away from those pet stores that sell puppies and kittens!

Yes there are a chosen few pet stores that only sell puppies and kittens from local animal shelters for a small fee. These pet stores are helping the local shelters find homes for their pets. The fee they require is only to cover, vaccinations, worming and often spaying and neutering. This fee goes directly to the local shelters. You may find this on occasion, but the majority of the pet stores sell strictly puppy mill pups.

Stay away from them!  Do some research. Find a truly reputable breeder that breeds for quality not quantity.