BENGALURU: Listening to the atrocities dogs face at puppy mills, I decided to see one first hand. I headed to the pet market next to the Shivajinagar beef market.
The 25-metre alley has barely any lighting or sanitation facilities. Four to six puppies are crammed into crates of different sizes.
Sellers boast of housing all breeds — from Pomeranians to Rottweilers. They say the pups are one month or older. But they look much younger.
The breeders toss pups into bags as though they were hotdogs. The pups are fed tiny quantities of food.
The crates are unclean, stacked one over another. Many puppies looked malnourished. They ate, played and excreted in the crate. The faeces were not cleaned up.
The first breeder-seller I visited showed me a couple of Labradors and Pomeranians he claimed were a month old.
“Take any madam, only four thousand,” he said. Could I take the puppy home in a week? “It only takes a day,” he replied.
Inside some crates were milk bowls. Many pedigree breeds, experts advise, are not to be given milk. The breeders-sellers clearly do not know this. Do they know anything about the breeds they sell beyond their names?
At the second store I walked into were pedigree breeds
Rottweilers and crosses between Labradors and Alsatians. They were priced at `4,000 and `2,500 respectively.
“They are two months old now, you can take them home today in a carton,” said the breeder-seller.
None of the breeder-sellers spoke of papers or certifications. They turned away at the mere mention of these words.
The prices are negotiable; they drop by a couple of hundred if you bargain. In the mainstream pet market, the breeds cost anywhere between `8,000 and `10,000. You can’t get breeds such as Rottweilers and German Shepherds under `1 lakh.
Another crate I peeped into had three ‘Golden Retrievers’ that, to my eyes, resembled mongerels. While one looked healthy, the other two were malnourished and had infections. They were unable to differentiate between faeces and food.
While they are pups, it can be difficult to differentiate between breeds. A cross with a mongrel is passed off as a pedigree breed. The breeder-traders at the puppy mills violate every section under Report 261, prescribed for dog breeding and marketing by the Animal Welfare Board of India. They also operate without displaying licenses. They could be imprisoned or fined according to The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of the Indian Penal Code. But the breeder-sellers fear neither the police not activists.