National Mill Dog Rescue: Rescuing Dogs From Misery

I have been planning to dedicate a post to this group ever since I started my blog. They are one of my favorite organizations and if I lived anywhere near Colorado Springs, I would love to work as a volunteer. From Connecticut I support NMDR in the small ways that I can from afar-- by publicizing their work, making donations when I have a little extra money, and donating items to their online auctions.

According to their website (www.milldogrescue.org), the mission of NMDR is "To rescue, rehabilitate, and re-home discarded breeding dogs and to educate the general public about the cruel realities of the commercial dog breeding industry." Located in Colorado Springs, CO., NMDR takes two trips per month to rescue 70+ dogs per month. Most of these are breeder dogs who have been bred over and over again until they are no longer able to produce puppies. At this point they become a burden rather than a source of profit and are either sold at auction or killed.

The best way to explain the commercialized dog breeding industry (puppy mills) is to equate it to any other operation that breeds livestock to earn a living. Dogs? Livestock? That is how they are treated in this industry. The purpose of a puppy mill is to sell puppies for profit: the more puppies, the more profit. Puppies coming from puppy mills typically have had very little human interaction, have been fed low quality food, and are often genetically inferior due to inbreeding.

There are currently more than 5,000 licensed puppy mills in the United States and there are estimated to be thousands more without a license that have managed to operate undetected. The conditions in puppy mills are often so poor that most people would consider it to be animal cruelty. However, under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) many of these conditions are within the scope of the law. In fact, the minimum standards are so low that they are just enough to keep most animals alive. I would argue that the minimum standards should be humane standards.

No matter how hard they work, the National Mill Dog Rescue cannot save all the dogs living in these inhumane conditions. They do everything they possibly can but until there are no more puppy mills, there will be dogs living in misery. Thank you to Theresa Strader and everyone at NMDR for making the world a better place, one dog at a time.

Please take a moment to learn about NMDR by watching this short video and visiting their website.



THE ONLY WAY TO STOP PUPPY MILLS IS TO STOP BUYING PUPPIES AT PET STORES, ONLINE, OR THROUGH ANY SOURCE THAT GETS THEIR PUPPIES FROM THE COMMERCIAL DOG BREEDING INDUSTRY.