You're in the mall, and you just have to stop and look at those cute little doggies playing in the window of the pet shop.  You go in, almost in spite of yourself, and before you know it, you have one of those cute little darlings in your arms, or you're sitting on the floor in a puppy room with a little one to cuddle.  “How much?" you ask, finding the licks and tail wags impossible to resist.

“Only $600,” the salesperson says.  “Special this week.  He was $950.”   And the next thing you know, you're walking out of the pet shop with a puppy all your own.

You probably have no idea that you are helping to finance one of the biggest torture machines in the animal world.  Puppy mills, where the majority of pet shop puppies come from, are cesspits of filth and disease, where dogs are kept confined in cages all their lives -- till their feet are deformed and their fur falls away from their bodies in mats.

The mother of the puppy you hold in your arms is probably exhausted, starving, sick; has never run on the grass in a yard or felt loving arms cuddle her.  She has never known kind voices or a full meal or a warm clean bed to sleep in.

She has never been brushed.  She sleeps on wire.  Her toenails will grow around until they cut into her pads.  She will pace back and forth compulsively, if her cage is big enough for her to move.  Feces and urine may drop down on her from the other little dogs in cages stacked above her.  She shivers in winter and pants in summer, with no shelter to protect her from freezing winds or blazing sun.

She may die this month, from any of a number of ailments.  If not, she might wish she did -- if she could wish.  She will die young -- whether from neglect and abuse or from being shot when she no longer produces puppies for sale. She will not be “adopted.”  She will not be loved.  She will die alone.

Your new puppy's litter mates may have died in the cage with him in the truck on the way to the store.  They were only five or six weeks old, after all -- too young to eat dog food, too sick to care, too lonesome for their mother.

Your puppy is one of the “lucky” ones.  But another puppy you saw in there just last week was not so lucky.  He was sick.  He died because it would have cost the pet shop too much money to call a vet to have him treated.  So they let him die.

Yours may die too, if he has a congenital defect -- something puppy mill breeders do not care about.  Kidney failure, blindness, hip dysplasia, deafness, behavioral problems ... the list goes on and on.  Will you be attached enough to your puppy to get it to a doctor?  Or will it die too?  If it is sick or does die, the pet shop will not give you back your money. They'll give you another puppy instead.  That's how they make their money.  Puppies are cheap.

To irresponsible pet shops and to puppy mills, puppies are not lives.  They are livestock and inventory -- something to be thrown away if defective. They either don't believe or don't care that dogs suffer pain, hunger, loneliness, fear.  It doesn't fit into the bottom line, and all they care about is their profit margin.

And how many people don't really think about what's involved before they fork out the money for that little doggie in the window?

How many of those pets will end up dumped by the side of the road, or in a shelter, only to be put to death when no one comes in to adopt them?

Far too many.  Animals are dying for want of homes, but the puppy mills don't care.  They just keep breeding more, and more, and more.

And how many people leave the pet shop with a puppy only to find that they really do not have the personality to have a pet -- or that their pet's personality doesn't mesh well with theirs?

If you want a dog, if you REALLY want a dog, please don't go to a pet shop.

Please go to a shelter and adopt a dog who otherwise will die -- you'd be amazed and sickened to learn how many purebreds end up this way --

Or go to a reputable breeder, who cares about the dogs and who raises them in a home where they are socialized and cared for and where they learn how to be loving pets.  And their prices and guarantees for pet quality healthy purebreds are much better than the unknown quality pups in a pet store.