200 Dogs, Including French Bulldogs, Seized from Puppy Mill in Maine
From Itchmo:
http://pressherald.mainetoday
http://www.wcsh6.com/news
Police authorities, the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland and the Animal Welfare Society, seized more than 200 dogs from a dog kennel in Buxton, Maine.”This is the largest seizure ever in Maine,” said Susan Britt, director of operations at the Animal Refuge League in Westbrook.
The owners of the J’aime kennel, John and Heidi Frasca, have been served 14 summonses for having an unlicensed kennel, two summonses for animal cruelty and one for failure to provide necessary medical treatment to animals. They could face more charges after the district attorney’s office reviews the case.
“They are facilities that place the profit over the welfare of the animals,” said Carol Ann MacKinnon with the Animal Welfare Society. “The animals, the puppies that come from these mills often have defects as well as behavior problems.”
About 200 dogs and puppies were tested for giardia, an one-cell parasite that lives in the intestines, and sarcoptic mange, a skin disease. Several animals have tested positive for the diseases and are being treated.
Over the years, police said they responded to complaints about the J’Aime Kennel, but they were turned away by the owners every time they asked to inspect the facility. Last Tuesday, police returned with a search warrant and discovered what they describe as a large-scale puppy mill.
Authorities said a puppy recently sold by the kennel was diagnosed with giardia. Anyone who has purchased an animal from J’aime Kennel within the last couple of months is urged to have it tested for giardia and mange.
J’Aime Kennel is one of the many names by which the Frascas advertised their business on the Internet. The couple sold various breeds including French bulldogs, German shepherds, Brussels Griffons, mini Australian shepherds, American bulldogs and Pugs on seven different websites.
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I found one of their websites:
http://jaimekennels.homestead
To me, it has all of the tell tale signs of a mill website. Their ‘sires and dams’ section lists first-name only dogs. If a pedigree is mentioned, it’s to boast there are ‘champions in it’ – Champions that are never named, of course, because they’re two generations back. The photos show dogs with grievous breed faults – bad bites, tongues that can’t fit into their mouths, wall eyes. Their health ‘guarantee’ insists you return the dog to them – “J’aime Kennels does not give money refunds…..replacement only…..same breed and sex…..contingent on availability….” – something that I don’t think any caring new owner is ever going to be willing to do. Sticking that line into your contract is a nice way to be able to promise the world, and yet never have to deliver.
All of this makes me unbelievably sad and frustrated. I am old enough, and have owned Frenchies long enough, to remember a time when a single French Bulldog in need of rescue was news, meriting an article in one of the breed magazines. A puppy mill mass rescue was huge news, scrambling people from states away into action, galvanizing the community, shocking all of us with the images we were shown. Now, we have videos from the HSUS showing Frenchies stacked in crates, awaiting sale to the highest bidder at Amish Puppy Mill auctions. We routinely have footage of groups of Frenchies being hauled out of squalid kennels, filth matted, frightened and alone. We see it so often, and hear it so often, that it’s almost stopped being shocking, even if it can never stop being sad.
You can’t turn back time – I know that. You can’t tell all of those ‘new people’ who now suddenly need to own a Frenchie to pick another breed. What you can do, however, is be a breed ambassador every single day.
Talk to people – if they ask about your Frenchie, encourage them to seek out a good, ethical breeder. Suggest your own, if you were happy with them. Attend your local meet up, and help inform prospective owners on how they can find a good breeder.
For those people seeking a puppy, learn to know where to look, what to ask, and when to walk away. If that voice in your head tells you something isn’t right, listen to it. Don’t let greed or impatience push you into making a bad decision. Avoid pet shops, at all costs, and make sure you’re buying direct from a breeder and not a broker. Your Frenchie is a life time investment in friendship and love – do some research, to make sure that not only are you getting a great puppy, but that your puppy’s mother isn’t suffering quietly in some filthy pen, pumping out her tenth litter to feed the market for the newest fad dog breed.
Film clip on puppy mill bust after the cut, and a clip from the HSUS showing Frenchies at an Amish puppy mill auction.
Sunday Night Puppy Blogging
The boy is doing better – he’s over a pound now, and his sister is almost a pound and a half. He seems to do well so long as I bottle feed him every other feeding. In between, he nurses from mom and tans his tummy under the heat lamp. Life is, apparently, good.
After I’m done bottle feeding Fat Boy (which is his unofficial nickname at the moment), Sailor gets his leftover formula. She’s quite happy with this arrangement, and has started to look forward to bottle time almost as much as he does. Tonight she was so eager she didn’t even want to wait for me to take the formula out of the bottle – check out the film clip after the cut, along with some gratuitous photos of puppy bellies.
By the way, as I mentioned in the comments down below, Sean now officially wins the title of ‘world’s most fearless pet food tester’, because yesterday he…
Ate.
A spoonful.
Of canned tripe.
Bow to the awesomeness that is Sean’s cast iron gut. He actually said it didn’t taste that bad – but this is the guy who I watched eat a plateful of BBQ pig snout in .St. Louis, so take it with a grain of salt – and a bottle of pepto.
Don’t forget – pix and a vid clip after the cut.
Bottle Feeding the Puppy Boy
Over the last few days, I’ve been concerned with how the baby boy’s weight gain has stagnated. He’s not losing weight – he’s just definitely not been gaining at a rate that I’m comfortable with. It’s a hard thing to explain to anyone who’s never had puppies – the fine line between a puppy who’s thriving, and one who’s not. The scariest thing about puppies this tiny is how rapidly a ‘slow weight gain’ can turn into a fading puppy – and once they start to fade, it’s really hard to reverse that process.
So, I’ve been bottle feeding him the last few days, just to supplement the food he’s getting from Sailor, and to give him the chance to get a head start. The bottle formula I use is about 12-13 calories per cc – a high calorie, rich formula that isn’t meant to be used as a permanent replacement for mother’s milk, but rather as a supplemental addition to it.
Its ingredients are:
Goats Milk
Corn syrup
Egg yolk
Probiotic live culture yogurt
Every three to four hours, I warm up some formula and sit down with the boy to feed him. Luckily for me, he’s an eager eater – a nice change from those puppies that refuse to eat. After the break, there’s a little movie clip of him being bottle fed. You’ll be able to see how voraciously he goes after a finger, if the bottle isn’t close enough at hand.
By the way, I think the cam isn’t going to work so long as I’m on satellite internet. This money gouging company has a throttle on how much data you can upload or download, and, as you can guess, a constant web feed can quickly chew up your bandwidth – resulting in my internet connection speed being choked down to less than dial up. Not practical, as you can imagine. So, until DSL makes it out here to the middle of no place, I’m going to limit the cam to a few hours a day – 3:00 pm EST to 6:00 pm EST, to be exact – which is the time period per day where I have unlimited bandwidth usage. Starting tomorrow, that’s when the cam will be on line.
Don’t forget – bottle feeding movie clip after the cut, or you can view it here . Read more →