The pomp and pageantry of the Westminster dog show is over. Many of the dogs have been shipped back to their breeders after living in their handlers' crates for years. Now, the females will be forced to bear litter after litter of puppies, only to have them all taken away to be sold. Every year following Westminster, there is a rush to buy dogs of the winning breed and other "designer dogs" who appeared on the screen. And breeders and pet stores are happy to oblige, taking as many orders as they can get and raking in money hand over fist.

In an industry in which dogs are viewed as commodities, their health and well-being matter less than the bottom line. To minimize expenses, breeders and puppy mills commonly warehouse breeder dogs in tiny, filthy cages; deny them veterinary care; and repeatedly get them pregnant, until the dogs can no longer produce puppies—at which point, they are often auctioned off, discarded at shelters, or killed.

Just this month, in yet another horror story, authorities raided a breeder and dog-show judge's home and found 38 dogs living in small crates that were caked with feces and fur. The cages were piled on top of one another in the dark basement, and a radio blared to drown out the sound of barking. Many of the dogs were malnourished and suffering from eye diseases and severe periodontal disease. They were so sick that 13 of them had to be euthanized immediately.

People who buy dogs from breeders or pet stores keep these puppy pimps in business. They also kill a shelter dog's chance at a home. Please, urge anyone you know who is considering buying a dog to adopt instead.

How much does that doggie in the window cost? One shelter dog's sad life.

Breeders and puppy mills churn out litter after litter of puppies, charging buyers hundreds of dollars per dog and raking in money hand over fist. The fact that they often cram dogs into filthy outdoor kennels and deny them veterinary care, while also forcing them to endure pregnancy after pregnancy, is bad enough.

But they also flood the market with puppies, exacerbating the animal homelessness crisis. In the U.S. alone, animal shelters must euthanize between 3 and 4 million animals every year. As long as there aren't enough homes for existing animals, no dog breeder can be called "responsible"—only "greedy."

Please share this lifesaving reminder on your Facebook, Twitter, and other social network sites.

Floyd was purchased from a California breeder, and like so many of the purebreds sold as mere "inventory" by puppy mills and other animal peddlers, the bulldog puppy's health suffered because the breeder focused on the bottom line rather than proper care.

So Young, So Much Suffering

By mating related dogs, breeders are essentially inbreeders, leading to a host of hereditary defects —it's estimated that one in four purebred dogs suffers from serious congenital health problems. After two veterinarians diagnosed Floyd with congenital kidney disease, his guardian urged the breeder to stop breeding the puppy's parents and notify the other people who had bought puppies from the same litter. The breeder callously dismissed her concerns, so she contacted officials with the American Kennel Club, but they merely suggested that she give the breeder a bad review online.

By the time PETA learned of Floyd's condition, the puppy was desperately ill, vomiting, lethargic, and barely able to eat or drink. Since he suffered from other health problems as well, a veterinarian determined that Floyd was a poor candidate for a transplant, the only treatment for his disease.

PETA's caseworker explained to Floyd's guardian that breeders frequently sell sick dogs and that the law often protects breeders more than the animals and their guardians. Floyd's guardian made the difficult but merciful decision to prevent Floyd from enduring further misery by having him euthanized.

What You Can Do

There is no such thing as a responsible breeder. Aside from the health problems that purebred dogs have, each dog and cat bred and sold by a breeder takes a home away from another animal waiting to be adopted at an animal shelter. Please don't contribute to the animal overpopulation crisis by buying animals from pet shops or breeders—always adopt from a reputable animal shelter or rescue.

Update:

Great news! The Los Angeles City Council has passed the ban on selling dogs, cats, and rabbits from breeders and puppy mills in pet stores. Those stores will now be required to adopt out homeless animals from shelters instead.

This is a heaven-sent victory for homeless animals in the City of Angels—let's hope it inspires more compassionate decisions across the country!

Originally posted August 13:

Los Angeles may soon take a huge stride toward reducing the number of homeless animals—the City Council is expected to vote soon on a measure that would ban pet stores from selling dogs, cats, and rabbits obtained from any source other than an animal shelter or rescue group. The proposed regulation has already been endorsed by the Los Angeles Times editorial board.

The Sun Is Setting on Breeding

PETA, at the forefront of efforts to curb animal homelessness and overpopulation—by offering low-cost to no-cost spaying and neutering, promoting adoption, and discouraging people from buying animals from breeders and pet stores—is understandably psyched about the possibility of the country's second-largest city taking such a major step toward ending animal homelessness.

If the proposal passes, Los Angeles will join a growing number of cities that are showing that they're serious about stopping the animal homelessness crisis—and the cruel puppy mills that fuel it—by putting laws in place to block animal sales in pet stores.

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

What You Can Do

If you live in L.A., please politely ask your councilmembers to vote in favor of the proposed ordinance. And if you live elsewhere, urge your city council to pass a law to protect animals from the cruelty caused by their breeding.

While most of us are grilling veggie dogs in the park or sipping drinks by the pool today, working animals won't have it so easy:

Horses pulling horse-drawn carriages today will tromp on hard pavement all day long in the intense heat. They will breathe exhaust fumes and will not have adequate food or water. Tonight, they will be crammed into a tiny stall for a few hours until they are dragged out in the morning to start again.

Hens used by the egg industry are spending the day crammed five deep into wire "battery cages" about the size of a file drawer. Because they are packed so closely together, they will have to urinate and defecate on each other.

Today, Indian donkeys will struggle to pull heavy carts that are overloaded with bricks and sugarcane. They will toil under the blazing sun with little rest, food, or water. They may be beaten or whipped to force them to keep going.

iStockphoto.com/Rpsycho

Orcas who are enslaved at marine parks today will perform meaningless tricks in front of crowds of screaming people in order to get food. They will swim endless circles in a tank that is, for them, comparable to a bathtub. The reverberations from their sonar will bounce off the walls, adding to their frustration and anger.

Female dogs in puppy mills will likely spend Labor Day in either a crude, filthy cage or chained to a tree. They will suffer from painful medical conditions, such as ear infections, mange, and abscessed feet, for which they will receive no veterinary care. They will either be pregnant with or nursing yet another litter of puppies, who will be taken away from them and sold.

Pregnant cows on dairy farms will be hooked up to milking machines several times today. They may be suffering from a painful udder inflammation called "mastitis," likely brought on by the drugs that increase their milk production. They may also be lame from being intensely confined and being forced to stand amid their own waste.

This Labor Day, resolve to help the animals who rarely have a day off. To learn what the PETA-supported working animal relief organization Animal Rahat is doing to help animals in India, visit AnimalRahat.com. 

A front group for the meat, puppy mill, tobacco, and alcohol industries as well as other industries that use and abuse animals is desperately trying to thwart animal protection efforts by publicly attacking PETA. The group got its comeuppance on Jane Velez-Mitchell's show Monday night, when the HLN host invited PETA Senior Vice President of Communications Lisa Lange to talk about the deceptive group's underhanded attacks. Here is some of the interview:

If the meat, dairy, puppy mill, and entertainment industries and their shills were genuinely concerned about the plight of homeless dogs and cats, they would actually do something about it, as PETA is, by conducting massive spay-and-neuter initiatives and encouraging people to adopt animals from animal shelters instead of buying them from businesses that churn out new puppies and kittens to add to the mix.

In what could prove to be a groundbreaking case for the legal rights of animals, New Yorker Elena Zakharova is suing a pet store because of the chronic pain that her dog, Umka, suffers from as a result of hip and knee problems, which she attributes to the dog's puppy mill origins.

While New York has a puppy "lemon law" that allows buyers to return dogs with medical problems, Zakharova refuses to send Umka back to the store as if she were a defective stereo. If the court rules in Zakharova's favor, it could set a precedent under which pet stores would have to pony up, as well they should, to guardians of puppy mill dogs who incur bills associated with medical problems caused by negligence or a deliberate lack of appropriate early care. This could, in turn, squelch puppy mills, which confine dogs to small, filthy wire cages as mere "breeding machines" and allow them to suffer from untreated illnesses and injuries.

We will watch and hope for the best in this important case for "pet shop pups."

If your dogs' tails are wagging a little more today, maybe they've heard the news that Ireland has cracked down on puppy mills! (Note to U.S. legislators: What's the holdup?)

The new Irish laws took effect on New Year's Day, outlawing the horrific conditions—including cramped enclosures, filth, malnutrition, exposure, disease, and a lack of socialization and veterinary care—common to those nasty intensive dog-breeding operations. All puppies must be microchipped so that the breeder can be identified, and authorities can inspect and shut down any facility that fails to meet the standards set by the new regulations.

So if you see people sporting a "Kiss Me—I'm Irish" button on St. Patrick's Day, feel free to take them up on it. But a much better way to pay tribute to the kind folks of the Emerald Isle is by speaking out against cruel and irresponsible breeding and the pet trade in your own corner of the world.

© Digital Vision/Cats & Dogs/Getty Images

In a trailblazing move that would earn tail-wagging approval from dogs everywhere, shopping mall developer Macerich has banned pet stores that sell animals in its more than 70 malls across the U.S. and is offering up the pet stores' old spaces as adoption centers for homeless animals instead. This compassionate decision follows another the company made at PETA's urging last year to ban the hideous "Pocket Pets" kiosks, which sell sugar gliders—tiny, exotic, nocturnal marsupials who often die as a result of improper care and the stress and loneliness of captivity.

Proving that one can make a difference, the pet-store ban is largely thanks to the efforts of California resident Jennifer Peterson, who informed Macerich that pet stores are essentially fronts for cruel puppy mills and worked with the company on a plan to evict the stores.

Hopefully, many other malls will follow Macerich's humane lead and ban sales of live animals. Each of us can help, too, by never buying animals from pet stores and giving a grateful dog or cat from a shelter a loving, lifelong home instead.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Tuesday night, in a vote that met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation, the Irvine, California, City Council made the groundbreaking move to simultaneously ban rodeos, circuses that use exotic animals, and retail sales of cats and dogs, making it the first city in the country to ban all three in one fell swoop.  

PETA had notified supporters about the pending Irvine vote and urged them to attend the meeting or contact City Council members, and their input was obviously heard loud and clear. Thanks to Irvine's new laws, elephants will be safe from bullhook beatings, horses and bulls will no longer break their backs after being goaded into bucking, and puppy mills will no longer be paid to churn out litters of sickly, unsocialized puppies. 

To help pass similar laws in your community, contact your city council members, or e-mail Info@peta.org. For updates on any proposed animal-related laws in your area, join PETA's Action Team.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan