I mean 67 years you know theyve been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the cold air the rain the snow the thunder nothing they have no protection yet as soon as we take the dog and you just wants to kill. Me just say you know wants the affection. To get you. Its ok. Mom and dad will probably live their entire lives on that facility in a pin whether its smaller or larger size but theyre not themselves hence they are breeding stock they they typically dont come in the house and snuggle on the couch. They have no idea what life is is about because they spent 247 in a cage when you came into one of these puppy mills. You would just see one on top of another in these Little Chicken wire crates. You know how cramped it is when youre when youre flying and i was thinking about and i thought it must be like that for the puppy mill dogs that are in these cages being able to get up and move around and i think that the 740 sevens comedy 400 people and i thought its just like taking 400 golden traverse or labs or shepherds and putting them in a scene shrapnell them in and making them live there for 8 years you will typically smell the facility before you actually walk near the cages and as soon as you can see the cages. I know its going to be a bad situation when you have the above ground wire bottom change because that sort of tells us that the person is trying to be very efficient. This is a Business People are never profit for an initial outlay of a couple 100. 00 for a few breeding pairs you can be selling puppies for a 1000. 00 or more apiece if you breed every heat cycle which is not what youre supposed to do but which many of the millers do you could be making tens of thousands of dollars within a couple of years they were housed in chicken coops one dog group so theres probably more dogs and chicken coops no days of neurologic. They make money on dogs being born. They rarely see of that. Thats how expensive and expensive the met would cut into their profits as far as selling the dogs. Its not good its really not a good place for going to. Find out wrong. It was a night that i was on the internet and some mouse and they came over me and said i want a puppy so i googled piece by piece on my. Delivery person called me to set up a day in time what time the dog would be arriving and he said you know i would like cash upon arrival not a check and that was fine so he went 1st wanted me to meet him at a rest stop off the new jersey turnpike. I just cut him off right there like that was not im not and that one day i think is not happening. I know i know somethings are right and that was one of them. Im not a nervous person im not scared of many things but i was nervous because children were inside and this guy was delivering a puppy 11 oclock at night in a van that reeked of cigarette smoke i said this is a street my house and i want to have a real address so he said thats fine ill call you on the street mr i run it oclock east call and said he was running late and he showed up at 11 so it was very fast he called he was out front i ran outside on the street and he got opened his it was a van he opened his van and there is all crates of dogs puppies in the back and he picked out rufus and he said heres your dog. 2 pieces of paper came with the dog that they look like i could have printed off the computer but thats i didnt know any better so i just assumed it was fine. I brought the dog and it was late so i just put him play with him for a little bit but he was super tired and he just looked like he wanted to go to sleep so put his bed in his crate and cry was weird because when i had puppies before they cried in a crate the 1st time he did make a sound that was like this the best dog every doesnt make noises perfect baby and i look up to a dog that was basically having seizures going to the bathroom and throwing up. I there is going to die. And at that i you know is its only 24 hours but you bond as a person you just feel super bad for its a baby in you just want to help it. He starts making this horrific sound like hes yelping in pain out of nowhere like just laying down just making this terrible sound off and on and i said this isnt normal and then he threw up and had diarrhea and i said im going to take him to our family that im thinking that i cant believe that somebody was and this dog here that sec and this is all the money that were going to spend and this is crazy because i had no idea what to expect as they said they could stay there for days to get better and i was just i was worried about the money i was worried about the dog at the same time after spending 2 days at northstar parents being treated for hypoglycemia rufus was able to return home at the initial examination the veterinarian the care for rufus certified he was unfit for purchase rufuss crosscountry journey began in millers burg ohio on a farm owned by most troyer this is how i am after i buy the dog after he is delivered then i start googling most rare then is when i start and then i was like what is wrong with you why wouldnt i really thats how naive i was i thought it was going to be perfect and then then i start googling and i hindsight was like i need to find out where these parents are like i was disgusted less than 2 weeks before nicole purchased rufus on line tours the u. S. D. A. License was cancelled currently no u. S. D. A. Or state commercial license is issued for this address ive got like giving up a couple times a i said no ones call me back this is so frustrating but then i kept thinking it wasnt about the money it was the fact that this was a life that no one cared about. They are just like oh take the puppy that was 6 weeks old 5 weeks old away from its mom and to shove it in a van with creeps stirrer and then called a day like no one cared. Of state highway 53. 00 in the middle of ohio this is a puppy mill not unlike the one that rufus was likely born and its where his parents will remain until theyre unable to produce the puppies in profits expected by the owner theres no Natural Light no human contact except for the red pickup that stops by wanted a discount or food and fill water bowls unregulated and under the radar. Was. Often we find that on the east coast that many of the puppies are coming from what we call ground 0 for large scale volume bring puppy mill bring and thats Holmes County and it is really the heartbeat of where a lot of the puppy mills and a lot of the issues have started in the state of ohio when you consider that they have 43000 population and you have over 500 channels thats a lot of kennels for the number of people in that general area. And Holmes County alone in 200720088 was a 9000000. 00 business. Now when you consider that the average Family Income for a family of 4 is probably less than 30000. 00 in Holmes County thats a considerable amount of production that is coming out of that particular area in amish country. Rufus his journey to new jersey is similar to the one thousands of puppies travel from Holmes County ohio in the years since rufus arrived at nicoles house and the driver has made multiple journeys to the east coast delivering puppies sold on the internet from puppy mills throughout Holmes County. Theres times where we here where the puppy was actually transported by someone just like john public and they load him into a vehicle and so when the puppies arrive its not unusual to have a vehicle full of puppies and some of those puppies are very sick and some wont make the trip whatsoever they just assumed ban puppy mills places they always meant like the mall the puppy store in them or the puppy store the inside of st i just never thought that it was like on the internet i really thought when i bought rufus that he was in pennsylvania running through a field happy night didnt think it was a puppy mill dog at all. Pennsylvania farmers began breeding dogs probably about 30 or so years ago there were actually breeders in missouri who came up to pennsylvania specifically because of its large amish and mennonite farming communities here we had one of the worst states for puppy mills i we were called the puppy mill capital of the east and that was primarily because pennsylvanias number one industry is agriculture. In the mennonites are more likely to view these animals as cash crops as Agricultural Products weve heard that over and over again and i believe that to be true. Not all amish families or not all minimally families breed dogs but the large majority the overwhelming majority of the people that we deal with the breeders are from illinois it was something that farm families could do between when you harvest in the fall and when you plant the spring. As commercial kennels cropped up across pennsylvania in the late 1960 s. The welfare of the dogs trapped in puppy mills was not viewed as a priority of the Pennsylvania Department of agriculture inspections were few and far between the regulations were ill defined and the program was clearly underfunded so the regulators were completely tied by the laws and just to the vagueness of all of them so what we really needed was in forcible measurable standards you would see inspection reports time and time again where a warden is morning operator to do something. And this didnt go on for like one or 2 inspections in a years time youre talking about years and years of warnings for many of the same offenses there was so much opposition from within the industry itself that the regulations were just going nowhere. And it became very apparent that we had to do a legislative fix. Is your media a reflection of reality. In the world transformed. What will make you feel safe. Isolation in the whole community. Are you going the right way or are you being led. What is true. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Of the shallows. Something man is used to put on a chain around the stone to continue a little spot that same day and. One that i desired to know. How much older the. Local just to me. Im still. Was still a lot. Of you put its not just on thoughts almost nubile not among the look so nice to stop it. Its seemed wrong. When old rules just told. Me to get to shape out just because the ticket and engagement equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart. Just to look for common ground. Throughout the years efforts to improve the lives of dogs in pennsylvania puppy mills would ultimately die in the legislature at the hands of powerful lawmakers it was not until a simple billboard was put up in Lancaster County that the general public began to learn of the problem our 1st billboard we made it look like a postcard and we had a family in our car and they were all waving across the top and yellow script just like a postcard and said welcome to scenic Lancaster County home to hundreds of puppy mills and we received over 3000 phone calls and emails in 2 days and the majority of those phone calls came from people who lived in Lancaster County who were thanked us for finally doing something about what their neighbors were doing i think the issue gained a lot of traction through the media you know more reporting on the issue it became sort of something that was that was out front it was no longer confined to you know what happened behind the party doors after witnessing the overwhelming response to their billboards in pennsylvania mainline Animal Rescue placed a new billboard this time Oprah Winfrey studio in chicago when we were on oprah and the aftermath we watched up here in the kennel i realized that it really didnt matter what the legislators wanted or what they didnt want because people started contacting us and people were horrified horrified by what was happening in Lancaster County it was happening in pennsylvania what was happening in missouri and oklahoma nebraska and they couldnt believe that animals were being treated this way and they wanted to do something about it. This was 100 percent a public effort it was really because people were hearing about the plight of puppy mills on the news on oprah reading about it in their newspapers going home and looking in the faces of these little pooches that are sharing their you know tables and beds for most of us and saying oh my gosh what if that had been my dog and it became very very personal to a huge number of people who started picking up the phones and calling their. Slaters through this whole struggle and it was a struggle and it was hard it was very very difficult i never lost sight of the fact that the people have the power to change things and when the legislature realized that they did not want to go home in an election cycle and face the constituency wondering why didnt you do something about this the bill got legs and this was a 2 year long is like 2 to 3 year long legislative battle in pennsylvania many of the dogs that the law was was pushed through many of the law the dogs that we wanted to protect are now dead so im hoping that its that the dogs the future dogs the dogs that are in these places in the future are helped by what weve done but most of the dogs the majority of the dogs that we wanted to help are gone now and they never got the relief that they deserved or that the law enforcement. Only Union Boilermaker out of pittsburgh. Despite every free town my i have is basically in their own work and and im working a 10 hour shift im working on saving dogs. Everybody has their own little parts and i think that was that was my call and you know go into the mills and thats what i want them to dogs so i know their laws are covered in your and theyre covering and theyve got at least what id like to do is take them and then hold on my head on to say theyre a bit touched a they ok so i mean i dont mind they got all over him because i want to separate dead were different you know youre leaving that life and i want their you know the rehab to start as soon as we take the dogs. And its sad because you cant save all said it hurts i mean theres plenty of nights you stay up at night and you can sleep with a lot of rescues or you know deal with the puppy mill dogs know that i mean honestly you know its costly running through your mind about the dog you left behind like the one i went to the guys bringing the dogs that there are so many dogs inside the puppy mill that when the dog started barking when he went in to get the dogs the side of the barn was actually shaking. Theres no force was good they suppose he this year and last year and kind of both pennsylvania and ohio made the laws better but there they they passed the walls but no ones in force and. A lot of people think when you say rescue dogs from puppy mills i think we went in to the board on take the dogs but thats thats all we did because the because mills are legal i think a lot of people dont understand that you know these puppy mills are legal theyre allowed to explain to him how you know we wait for the amish to contact you know then we set up a day when we can go get the dogs and then we know will load up the. Ours you know them will drive you know made on their property get the dogs. I mean. I dont know about. They said all that all that all they want is luggage so thats one way. To the economy i mean. In my name is eugene deep ask well you know im the pennsylvania Auditor General. We make sure all money is spent legally ineffectively but we also audit state programs so its not just a question whether the financial side of it is the you know the the account ledgers or matching up but also what is the effectiveness of the program so we get to go in and say ok the money might have been spent legally but was it spent effectively it was a program run effectively while inspections and prosecutions dramatically increased after the pennsylvania dog law came into force within a few years noticeable concerns began to emerge i started to receive reports confidentially from within department reaching out to me dog wardens administrators people who had worked for the department and had left that are an area. Who were concerned that the new head of the office of dog law had no idea what she was doing so reviewing inspection reports and in 2011. Indicates that there were virtually no citations issued just like any other law its only as good as the enforcement of it and early on in the law there were some concerns that it wasnt being enforced properly so and the audit of the dog or program began. In a scathing report Auditor General di pascali found the dog law program from its introduction in 2008 through 2012 showed an intentional lack of enforcement of the states dog law and the commercial kennel canine health regulations. Enforcing the law in the can mean the partner agriculture said this during the audit that they werent enforcing it because they knew the kennels werent complying is say that again they were enforcing it because they knew the kennels werent complying but the goal of the law is to get people not to do it the goal of the dog was not to find champs it was to get kennels do improve the conditions in their facilities. For the animals thats the goal of the program and we were getting the troops ready to really make a huge deal out of the lack of enforcement of this very popular law and all of a sudden there was a 180 of the department and they hired a director of enforcement who was one of the best dog wardens that weve ever seen but here is the the big big issue and its not just this its anything we do the People Matter who are running the programs right now i think the Administration Made significant strides into who is running the program but the people that are actually running the program sometimes you know that there are faceless bureaucrats to the general public and i understand that but the actual individual whos in charge matters and its important that governors are they be dead. Mark radical republican they not just put people in because of the considerations but also the qualifications of the individual but i do think that that is the case now that you know top notch professional there and that i think is a big reason why youre starting to see a turnaround in approach. While progress has been made the challenges of regulating and inspecting license to marshal breeders and finding unlicensed breeders in pennsylvania continues in the heart of Lancaster County millwood kennel aka millwood puppies provides a prime example of the bureaucratic shell game played by some large scale breeders. David and iommi stalls fus have been breeding dogs on their property in