Pet Store Virginia

Our undercover investigations prove time and time again that many dog shops purchase puppies from puppy mills. But that hasn’t ended so many dog shops we’ve examined from wanting to deceive clients about the beginning for the pups it sells. This season we sent an undercover investigator with a concealed digital camera into every animal store in Virginia we could realize that sells puppies. Our researchers also traced the sources of more than 2, 000 puppies sent to Virginia animal stores over seven months of 2014.

This dirty, underweight boxer had been photographed by USDA inspectors at facility of Charlene and Darlene Koster in Kansas, which offers to Petland, among the shops in Virginia discovered purchasing from puppy mills. Picture: USDA

The outcome of our investigation have only fortified our past tests. We found extensive deception and omissions — all apparently built to provide untrue assurances or even to dupe the public into purchasing high priced puppies from mills dealing with dogs deplorably.

Some quite noteworthy findings:

• A puppy in a single store (Pet-Go-Round, Virginia seashore) was so unwell he ended up being gasping for atmosphere and could barely stay: our investigator labeled as police force once she left the shop. The puppy was delivered from a dealer in Missouri, the nation’s hotbed for mills.
• One shop (family dog, Chesapeake) informed our detective that they purchase from a tiny breeder whenever truly they purchase from a Nebraskan with a long list of Animal Welfare Act violations. That kennel had been featured in our 101 Puppy Mills report and also other large-scale breeders that break the minimal criteria of treatment set by the government.
• Another shop (Dreamy Puppy in Chantilly) claims in on the web advertisements it doesn’t purchase from puppy mills, as well as its staff informed united states they have puppies just from “local breeders…small breeders in the region.” Yet we found that Dreamy Puppy obtained puppies from a few notorious puppy mills in Arkansas and Missouri, including one that cited “.22 shot by owner” as the formal form of euthanasia, and another that pleaded guilty to complicity in cruelty to animals fees last April.