After observing a large number of dogs who were living in filthy conditions, chained, breeding, fighting, or confined to hot areas—and getting no help from local animal control—a caring person notified PETA, and one of its caseworkers jumped into action.

The miserable pups were covered with fleas and living without veterinary care or socialization. Two of the dogs were kept inside a trailer that had no air conditioning or any other kind of ventilation. One was significantly underweight. Those responsible for the sad conditions of the dogs clearly didn't care about their welfare, so the caseworker persuaded them to surrender the animals and arranged for an area resident to pick up the 13 dogs and carry them to a reputable local animal shelter—from which one has already been adopted into a loving home.

What You Can Do

PETA will continue to monitor the situation to make sure the dogs' former owners don't acquire more animals, but this case again illustrates the importance of speaking up when you see animals in trouble and being persistent until they get the help they so desperately need.

• Puppy and kitty kisses to the city of Toronto for banning retail sales of dogs and cats, which will prevent breeding and give the awesome animals in shelters a greater chance at finding a home. 
• Hisses to Eric Poeschla at the Mayo Clinic, whose creepy experiments with glow-in-the-dark kittens are so nauseating that they make us turn green too.
• Here's something to tweet about: The city of San Francisco requires new buildings to use bird-safe glass.
• Hisses to the owners of a cat boarding facility in Malaysia, who left nearly 300 cats alone and starving for a week. Kisses to the volunteers who broke in to save them and to the Malaysian government for considering a new mandatory $34,000 fine for cruelty to animals. 
• Kisses to Louisville, Kentucky, couple Jessica Pfohl and Florian Speier for offering vegan eco-friendly, low-VOC Unearthed Paints to color our homes in pretty hues without the ugliness of the milk industry.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer of Fox's popular dance-off show So You Think You Can Dance, was contemplating—gasp—purchasing two puppies from a breeder until a friend pointed out the obvious: "I don't know why you want to go through a breeder anyway," said the friend. "There are too many dogs in the world that haven't got homes that are already alive."

Lythgoe went to an animal adoption event in Los Angeles and promptly fell in love with Bonnie and Clyde, an odd couple (she's a Dalmatian, he's a pit bull) who had formerly been cared for by a homeless man. Thanks to Lythgoe's good nature, the inseparable duo have, in his words, "moved from downtown homeless to Bel-Air."

Know someone who's thinking about getting a dog? Urge him or her to follow Nigel's example and dance, not walk, to the nearest animal shelter.

Via PeoplePets.com

Written by Alisa Mullins

OK, we confess. Our area of expertise is registration papers for dogs. And dogs shouldn't need documentation to have a place in our homes and communities. That's the point we're making by displaying our new billboards in the Copper State in the wake of the controversial anti-immigration measure there—though it could apply anywhere else in the good ol' USA.

Click here to see the billboard in Spanish.

You know the kind of papers we mean: The ones that the AKC gives out to prove that a dog has "pure bloodlines." Every year, breeders produce more and more purebreds even as millions of wonderful, healthy, loving animals must be euthanized in animal shelters because there aren't enough homes for but the tiniest fraction of them. We hope that you will join us in decrying registration papers for dogs!

Written by Jeff Mackey

Come November, Missourians will have a chance to shed the dubious distinction of being known as the nation's puppy-mill capital thanks to Proposition B, a ballot initiative that will allow voters to decide whether or not to ban breeding operations with more than 50 dogs and to require large-scale breeding operations to provide dogs with adequate food, water, shelter, space, exercise, and veterinary care.

Puppy mill operators are up in arms because Proposition B would make "puppy mill cruelty" a misdemeanor crime. As it turns out, puppy mill owners don't like it when their "businesses" are called "puppy mills." They claim that the term is prejudicial, and they are suing to have it removed from materials describing the initiative.

A blogger for St. Louis' Riverfront Times newspaper playfully suggested that "dog-breeding factories" might have a better ring to it. What do you think?

Written by Alisa Mullins

This morning’s Today show featured a story about the latest fad dog breed in China—and the astronomical prices people are willing to pay for the dogs—up to $600,000 in some cases. As he was introducing the story, Today host Matt Lauer asked co-host Meredith Vieira how much she would be willing to pay for a dog. “I like to get them from the pound, actually,” she replied.

That’s right! You can’t put a price tag on unconditional love—or on the great feeling you get from saving a life.

Written by Alisa Mullins

If you're a regular PETA Files reader, you probably already know about the physical and psychological problems that plague specially bred (meaning inbred) dogs. Labrador retrievers commonly suffer from hip dysplasia, cataracts, and retinal degeneration. German shepherds are prone not only to hip dysplasia but also to spinal paralysis, epilepsy, and blood disorders. Bulldogs often develop heart problems and hip disease. (Purebred cats are prone to health problems, too, as I discovered after adopting an adult Siamese cat from a local rescue group and finding out that he has asthma—a condition that affects Siamese kitties more than any other type of cat.)

But a new study shows that breeding is messing with more than dogs' bodies: It's actually changing their brains. The study's researchers found that the brains of many dogs with short snouts, such as mastiffs and pugs, have rotated forward by as much as 15 degrees and that the olfactory bulbs of these animals have drifted downward—possibly affecting their ability to smell! Researchers aren't sure if these changes could also affect behavior, but they may.

This is just one more reason why breeding animals should be nixed—and dogs should be mixed!

Written by Paula Moore

We can only hope so—and we mean that in the nicest possible way!

When PETA learned that Springfield, Oregon, comedian Aaron Jamison, who has terminal cancer, is selling ad space on his urns to offset his bills, we were dying to help. Aaron must be a great guy because he took us up on our offer to place this anti-KFC ad on one of the urns:

You don't have to kick the bucket to stick up for abused chickens—just boycott KFC's greasy grub and tell everyone at work and in your neighborhood to do the same. Now's a perfect time, too, because KFC is hoping to make a killing over the next month by selling pink buckets of chicken as a really sick sales gimmick. KFC can't pretend not to see the irony in trying to associate itself with breast cancer research. Let's just say that fried and fatty foods + obesity = increased cancer risk.

And when we found out that dog breeding is one of Aaron's pet peeves, we bought this ad too:

How about you? Want to go out in style?

Written by Paula Moore

This is Precious.

PETA staffers and volunteers were out delivering doghouses and straw bedding to neglected dogs one bitterly cold February morning when they found her and the 11 puppies she had given birth to the night before. Three of the puppies were already dead, having frozen to death overnight. Precious was holding one of the dead puppies her mouth in a futile attempt to warm the cold little body. As excited as she was to see her rescuers, she refused to part with her dead baby.

We rushed Precious and her puppies to the vet, but the surviving puppies were so hypothermic that their body temperatures did not even register on a thermometer. Precious herself, besides being severely malnourished, was feverish, anemic, and crawling with fleas and ticks. She also tested positive for hookworms and heartworms.

While Precious had shivered in the cold, watching her babies die one by one, her owners had been snug in their warm house, oblivious to her existence out there on her chain. They didn't even know that she had given birth until PETA staffers told them.

Precious and her puppies epitomize what happens when people do not spay or neuter their dogs and cats. So much suffering could have been prevented if her owners had availed themselves of PETA's "Spay and Neuter, Immediately, Please" (SNIP) mobile clinic, which spays and neuters pit bulls for free and even provides free transportation if necessary.

We wish we could say that Precious' case was an isolated event—that it isn't something we deal with often—but we hear every single day from dog and cat owners who don't think that it will matter if their dog or cat has "just one litter." In Precious' case, her owners had no idea that newborn puppies cannot survive freezing temperatures. They didn't know that pregnant and nursing animals require extra food to nourish their growing puppies or that they need medical care just like people do. They didn't realize that dogs need to be treated for fleas to prevent anemia, and that dogs living in mosquito-infested, swampy areas need heartworm prevention nearly year-round or they will almost certainly contract this deadly disease.

They didn't know any of this until it was too late for Precious and her puppies.

By taking a moment to ask your governor to sponsor mandatory sterilization legislation in 2010, you can be the voice that saves a dog like Precious.

Written by Alisa Mullins

PETA's campaign to stop plans by biological supply company Bioculture to build a monkey-breeding facility in Guayama, Puerto Rico, just got another shot in the arm, courtesy of CNN Headline News' Jane Velez-Mitchell.

In an update to a story that originally broke on Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell back in July, PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo appeared on the show along with Puerto Rican Senator Melinda Romero to talk about the controversy surrounding Bioculture's plans to tear wild monkeys out of their native home in Mauritius, lock them up in cages, and sell their offspring to laboratories.

After PETA and other groups started lobbying against the facility, the Puerto Rican Senate launched an investigation and uncovered what appear to be illegalities associated with the company's permit process, including failure to file an environmental impact report and other required reports. The Senate has now condemned Bioculture and vowed to stop the company from setting up shop in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans who are learning about the project thanks to PETA, a coalition of animal groups, and Jane Velez-Mitchell are none too happy about it. Hundreds have turned out to protest the monkey factory farm, and even government officials such as Senator Romero and Guayama Mayor Glorimari Jaime are outspoken in their opposition to it. You can add your voice to theirs by clicking here.

Written by Alisa Mullins