Do USDA inspectors get paid off by puppy millers or are they just so darn lazy and don’t care that thousands of dogs are being tortured and murdered by these evil humans? Or maybe the USDA inspectors don’t care that every puppy mill dog sold through pet shops means the potential for thousands of dollars in unnecessary vet bills and years of heart ache for unsuspecting buyers.

Whatever the reason, its time for MAJOR overhaul of the USDA and the laws and regulations governing puppy mills. We have got to start treating these hells as the societal cancers they are. A recent ABC report shed much needed light on how USDA inspectors take public dollars to do a job they seem incapable of doing.

I know the US has some difficult and threatening issues to confront right now. But puppy mills are a cancer undermining our national humanity and sucking away family and governmental funds.

Puppy mill dogs cost thousands of dollars in unexpected vet and behavioral bills dealing with problems caused by greedy and unscrupulous breeders. There is the heartache caused by sick dogs. we expect the heart ache of losing a dog to death after a long and basically healthy life. We do not expect to bring home a puppy who has so many genetic and rearing-caused health problems he cannot live a natural life.

In the worst cases these puppy mill dogs get dumped at shelters because owners cannot afford to keep them or the humans become so upset with the health and behavioral problems they give up on the dogs.  Who bears the cost? Already over-burdened governments bear those costs.

Big barks to those legislators working on closing governmental loopholes. But we need more! We need federal and state legislators to stand up an change the laws and regulations. If you don’t want to out-right ban puppy mills, fine. That’s right fine them and tax them into non-existence. Make them pay for the governmental funds they suck up by making the fee to have a puppy mill a heavy one. How about ten thousand dollars per animal in a cage?

And let’s not forget the pet stores that act as front men for the millers. Make them liable for health or training costs of EVERY puppy sold through their stores. Hey, if the store owners know that every $1000 dog leaving their store could cost them $10 K they won’t be so anxious to have “that doggy in the window.”

If the puppies sold through pet stores were cars, there would already have been so many recalls the auto maker would have gone bankrupt. Yet we let proven defective products, puppies, continue to be produced and hawked by the animal equivalent of the worst of used car salesmen and nothing is done.

Thank you, ABC , for calling the nation’s attention to this financial and emotional sinkhole.