Humane Society President Speaks On Texas's "Puppy-Mill" Bill

• Please define the "abuse" you're claiming. When. Where. By who. When you reported it and if you haven't, why not. Otherwise you're just parroting what you've been told by the extreme animal rights movement. What is your definition of "extreme confinement".

• "I do know some of the farmers in my area and honestly, people should live as well as their animals." ....gimme a break. You strongly support animal welfare and deny farm animal extreme confinement and abuse in today's industrial agriculture. hahahahahahahaha!!!!

• Typical animal rights extremist response. Don't address any of the facts just call names. I swear our opposition has the social maturity of the average 5 year old. I don't breed, I rescue (and I'm a long time volunteer). I work to support my local shelters. I don't own a farm or livestock and I can't say I've ever farmed unless you count my tiny herb garden. I do know some of the farmers in my area and honestly, people should live as well as their animals. I don't know of a single person who strongly believes in and supports animal welfare that has anything good to say about Wayne Pacelle or the factory fundraising HSUS which does next to nothing for all those sad faced animals seen in their commercials.

• Minimum standards already exist under the law. Most of the "public" doesn't have any idea what it's asking for because it's being coerced into asking for what animal rights extremists want. There is no other way to explain the misleading petition drives where petition gatherers where caught in bald-faced lies and the misleading advertising preceeding Missouri's Prop B. As an American, Pacelle indeed has a right to speak and wander around incoherently (I mean, have you ever actually heard this guy speak off the cuff, it's tragicomic). But when East Coast animal rights extremists come to states like Texas, claiming they know what's best for Texas... it's really time to show them the door. How can Wayne Pacelle, who owns no pets, has no "hands on fondness" for animals and has never worked a single day on any farm or ranch claim he knows what's best for the animals of Texas?

• Speaking of lies... where is your listing of the expense of keeping all these dogs? Property costs, food, water, housing, vetting, transportation costs. Where is the study that shows diffinitively that every "puppy mill" has well over 100 breeding females? And if they can be counted with that degree of accuracy, you must know where all the substandard breeders are, so why aren't you reporting them and having them closed down? It's because animal rights extremists are not interested in puppy health, they're interested in creating chaos so that they can work behind the scenes to ban all dog breeding. "One generation and out." and "I would love to never see another domestic animal born." are Wayne Pacelle's rallying cry. If you think that jcboxer or any animal rights activist actually cares about the welfare of animals, you're sadly mistaken.

•  haha...wow, someone needs to stop smoking the liberal weed.  100 breeding females?  Do you know how much work that is?  IF there is anyone in the entire state with that many (right) then there is only one and the current laws should be more than enough to suffice.

• Oh poor little Miss Suzy how you do not have your facts straight at all. I am all for giving dogs and puppies the proper care they need, however this is not what this is all about. Wayne Pacelle likes to come into each state and slide his bill in with other items attached to try and stop not only bad breeding of puppies but his ultimate goal is to stop all agriculture. Look what just happened in Missouri. He tried to pull some crap here and almost got away with it. Thank goodness the Legislature and Senate got to tweek this before making it law. Wayne was at the Senate hearing and got to talk and the Senate got to ask him questions. In his proposition he referred to dog and puppy through his proposed bill. Then on Item #9 he referred to domesticated animal. When asked what he thought a domesticated animal was he said "any animal behind a fence". He was again asked, "Do you mean cows, chickens, goats etc." and he replied "yes". His ultiar motive was to stop all agriculture in Missouri and now he is heading for Texas. He has approx 22 states that he is working on initiaves for at this time. Its not about the dogs in the end! I am all for humane conditions for the dogs and puppies but there is more to this than just that. Better educate yourself before its too late.! And to the man who pointed out how much dog breeders make each year. Get a life! You are so off base. If only that was the case I would be rich, rich, rich and would have retired by now LOL If the puppy mills are not following current laws, why do you think they will follow the new ones?

• This bill imposes minimal standards. The public isn't asking for much. We want dog and cat breeders to adhere to a minimal standard of decency in the way the animals in your care are treated. If you can't abide by these minimal standards then you are in the wrong business. BTW Smergles, the last I heard Texas is in America. As an American, Pacelle and has the right to be in Texas or anywhere else he chooses.. Don't try to act like HSUS and Pacelle are some outside agitators. They are not. They're the people of the US. Some HSUS members are your neighbors.

• All the puppy mill operators and inhumane farmers are out today...and they hate Wayne. With good reason.

• Texas is waking up to the fact that millions of dogs suffer because of the sickening greed of dog breeders that perpetuate the myth of "a home like setting". When will these "puppy millers" give anyone a tour of the facility, NEVER! When the truth about the despicable living conditions comes out as yet another "rescue organization" saves these dogs from the hellish places. These "millers" set up shop again with NO, not one red dime, monetary penalty, They are not even required to pay for the re-homing of these poor dogs that have exploited their entire lives. And anyone who comes on this page to cry and moan, remember this: 100 breeding females 5 pups per liter x 2 liters per year x $500 per pup average = $500,000.00 Now the average puppy mill has many more females that that example, but i think anybody that realizes how much money is at stake begins to see through the lies of this shameful industry.

• Missouri stands to loose ALL of there tax dollars to HSUS laws. Dog breeders pay enough tax to keep All the schools in Missouri operating. HSUS works off a book of bi-laws written in 1930's Germany. The book was written for a planet with a small population. Dont let HSUS in or they will shut down every animal and food producer in your State.

• In the interest of educating those people who may believe the 'keeping intact bitches means breeding lots of litters' mantra repeated over and over again by the ARAs, here is how such a law would affect us:When we buy a puppy, we have hopes that it will be useful in our breeding program. This involves growing the pup to adulthood, which for us is a minimum of two years old. Dogs typically mature more slowly than bitches, and may take three years to grow up completely. At that time a decision is made whether to include the animal in our breeding program, however, that does NOT mean that the dog or bitch will be bred immediately. Including the animal in our breeding program means it will be kept intact until such time as it is bred, NOT that we will breed it on it's second or third birthday. Once a bitch or dog is bred from, we usually keep at least two or three pups from the litter to grow out and evaluate. Because we are outcrossing and crossbreeding, how the pups turn out is fairly unpredictable at this point, so we have to keep several and grow them up to maturity to evaluate both our breeding decisions and their future inclusion in the breeding program. Sometimes the pups turn out to be fantastic and sometimes they don't. Because we don't breed to make money, we don't consider it a huge loss when a pup doesn't turn out to be what we want. We simply exclude that dog from consideration and go back to the drawing board.Growing pups takes a minimum of two years, since we have large dogs and they mature pretty slowly. Obviously, these pups must be kept sexually intact during their evaluation period, adding to the number of intact dogs we would be allowed to keep. Once a bitch has been bred and we have seen what she produces, we may decide to try breeding her to a different dog. These pups also will take several years to be included as breeding animals. Most of our dogs will not be bred until they are at least three or four years old, more likely five or six. Some may be kept intact until that time only to be excluded from the program entirely because we have decided they have nothing to offer, or because a younger dog has better qualities, replacing the older one in the program. Because we are not in a hurry to produce many pups in a short period of time and our dogs don't have to earn their keep, we can space our litters out so that each one gets individual attention.Under a restrictive limit law, we would not be able to keep as many pups, and would have to desperately hope that those few pups have the qualities that we want to reproduce. We would have to breed each bitch or dog as soon as they are reproductively capable, so that if they do not produce what we are looking for, we could spay or neuter them as quickly as possible so they do not contribute to our limit of intact animals. We would have to breed as many litters as possible in a short time, so that the parents the could be spayed or neutered as quickly as possible after reproducing and their offspring could replace them as intact animals. We would not be able to breed a bitch twice, unless we did it on consecutive seasons, without the ability to grow her pups out and evaluate them. Instead of a slow, carefully considered approach to our breeding program, we would have to do a lot of guessing and even more hoping, if we were limited in the number of intact dogs we could keep.My last litter is two years old. I have no plans for a litter this year. I have a tentative litter planned for next year. Yet because of the number of bitches I keep, I would be considered a commercial breeder under this bill. It doesn't matter that I would need to breed several litters a year and charge a very pretty penny for the pups just to break even on my dog expenses. It doesn't matter that the IRS would laugh in my face if tried to claim my dog breeding was a business. It doesn't matter that logically, the purpose of a *commercial* business is to make money, and therefore, logically, regulating breeders by the numbers of pups they produce and the amount of their total income generated by puppy sales would be the way to go. Logic doesn't matter. I keep a bunch of bitches because it provides me with a large genetic and phenotypic base to choose from for the next generation. I will not be able to continue my cross-breeding program without the ability to keep several pups from a litter, and keep them intact until they are old enough to breed from, which may be as old as six or seven. I will not compromise the way I've been doing things, slowly. If I cannot do it right, I will not do it at all. Which is exactly what the writers and backers of these numbers based bills want.

• as Wayne says Texas already has a law to address this..and GOSH ALL MIGHTY IT REQUIRES A WARRANT.. how un American is that. Who needs those pesky "reactive laws' that actually protects American citizens from intrusion into their lives and oh while we are at it.. who needs the stupid "due process.? I want my local fireman fighting FIRES not inspecting peoples homes

• Wake up Texas and do not let this scoundrel into your state and let him pass his idea of what a puppy bill needs and should be. He has tried in other states and failed. Stop him before it is too late!

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