Imagine a sweltering day in a Georgia summer. The temperatures are at an all-time high and your skin feels prickly and tight as soon as you step outside in the sun. With sweat dripping off your forehead, you enter a puppy mill. It’s dark and so hot you feel as if you’ll suffocate. The overwhelming sound of whining and barking in your ears could drive anyone mad. When you look closer, you find dogs of all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of malformations and genetic disorders, stuffed into a cage too small for even a single canine to live happily in. You watch as a tired and overbred mother lays on her side and feeds her puppies for the hundredth time in her life. She looks at you as if she is begging for help. The smell of defecation and rotting flesh fills up your nose until you just can’t take it anymore and you leave. These puppies live in these inhumane and disgusting mills their whole lives and they never get to just leave. The government that should be protecting these defenseless puppies from such vile conditions is doing nothing to stop, or even regulate, the “production” of these living and breathing animals.

Under the Animal Welfare Act, regulations are completely up to the puppy mill owners to decide what is and is not considered “adequate”, similar to the Georgia Animal Protection Act. This lack of specificity is reflected in the following list of bare-minimum laws:

• Dogs may be confined in spaces only six inches larger than their bodies, not including the tail
• Dogs may be forced to relieve themselves in their cages.
• Unwanted animals may be killed or auctioned off.
• Facilities may only be inspected once every 2-3 years.
• A dog may be caged 24 hours a day for his or her entire life, only removed from the cage to be bred.
• Human interaction is not required.

This petition is to call for improved government regulations regarding puppy mills and their conditions including but not limited to:

• Improved living conditions and cage size.
• Human interaction with the puppies.
• Requiring workers to undergo training and acquire a license to operate puppy mills.
• Prevention of inbreeding (artificial insemination).

This call to action not only affects dog lovers, owners, and vegans, but anyone with a heart. Our government was built on the sole idea that the nation would be governed by the people, and today you have the chance to change these inadequate government regulations and impact the lives of millions of mistreated dogs.