Amish Puppy 'Farms' in the News Today

Today's Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper finally has a front page story about the Amish puppy 'farms' and puppy auctions in Ohio. According to the article, dog farms now outnumber dairy farms in Holmes county which is one of Ohio's leading milk producers! :cry*ing: One of the Amish farmers interviewed said he started his dog business when hog farming became unprofitable. Later in the article, he was actually quoted as saying "Dogs are livestock, not people." :swear: He keeps the dogs in cages and pens inside his former hog barn!

The USDA has only 5 agents to perform the annual inspections of the 161 Ohio kennels who sell dogs to wholesalers. The Holmes county dog warden and his staff have visited and scrutinized 317 county-registered kennels so far this year and have only found a few minor problems.

What is so heartbreaking about this is Ohio laws!! The basic problem is the laws do not recognize dogs as animals needing social interaction and human contact.

The company that maintains the records on these purebred dogs is American Pet Registry.

But some of the classifed ads I've seen say AKC!

Here is the link:
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/
http://www.cleveland.com/frontpage/pdfs/sunday.pdf

How can any dog not be treated has special, with a warm kennel and clean and well look after if not in the house ---There is no excession to keep a dog in a gage I donot believe that any dog should be treated like this in England livestock has more protention than dogs I donot known the laws in the U S A so I really should not comment Aileen

Livestock has more protection in Ireland as well -- this is one of the issues we stressed in campaigning for puppy farm legislation.

It is a sad sad state of affairs. We say we are an advanced educated society.....seems like we are going backwards rather than forwards.