Emily Walker
As the Australian outbreak stretched into its second month, popular “designer” dog breeds jumped in price, with some fetching thousands of dollars.
But animal welfare groups claim they have seen as much as a 25% increase in reports around Australia of puppy breeding farms that are willing to cash in on the “pandemic puppy” market.
Puppy farms are unimaginably awful places where animals are treated like breeding machines and must be pregnant perpetually until they’re too sick or can’t produce puppies anymore.
Sadly, these dogs are also kept in horrific and overcrowded conditions that lead to various serious welfare and medical issues.
This is the sort of “breeding” that goes on at puppy farms.
Breeding dogs are not treated as individual animals with unique needs but rather cogs in a money-making machine.
They get little to no exercise, food, and water are often inadequate, they’re kept in small cages, never seeing sunlight, and bred over and over again with no regard for their health or wellbeing.
On top of all this, the marketers and dealers who sell “designer” puppies make huge profits by purposely misleading consumers about their breeding practices and hiding the fact that when you buy a dog from one of these places, you are directly supporting an animal cruelty.
Animal activists say that dogs are kept in ‘upright tombs’
The spokesperson for an animal rights organization, Aleesah Naxakis, commented that breeders around the country are “pumping out litter after litter of designer dogs” who tend to be less healthy than other breeds and have predispositions towards specific behavioral problems.
She goes on to say that the epidemic of designer dogs is really a “pandemic” and that people who buy them from pet stores are getting ripped off.
The State Government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has begun an inquiry into how dog owners can be educated better in order to prevent the spread of the disease.
Avidly, as part of this investigation, it is asking puppy buyers to come forward with information about the sellers.
There are presently no laws around the breeding and selling of dogs in Australia.
While local councils have been working hard to restrict the movement of lurchers in certain areas, they acknowledge that without national legislation, it’s going to be very difficult for them to contain the spread of this deadly disease.
This is why they’re calling on the Federal Government to step up and help them out.
They believe that the Federal Government needs to put in place a regulatory framework for breeders, sellers and buyers that will help ensure animals are bred humanely and legally.
Finally, they need much harsher penalties for people who break these laws so that people will actually start taking them seriously.
And at the moment, local councils say they are powerless to take action against people who break these laws because they currently just don’t have any power.
In terms of humans contracting this disease, it’s been suggested that it might not be all that hard for them to do so if they handle their dog and then touch other parts of their body without washing their hands.
According to an expert, Professor Frank Grutzner of the University of Sydney, this is a very real possibility and one that deserves further investigation.
Even though we don’t have any official reports in humans yet, some patients are showing symptoms consistent with the disease but as doctors admit, it’s hard to make a certain diagnosis without knowing what specifically the patient has been infected with.
The disease called canine Brucellosis disease is a sickness that can cause dogs to be infertile and have unintended pregnancies. Symptoms in humans are different, often unnoticed through the symptoms of headache pain, fever or joint pain.
That’s why it’s so important for dog owners to come forward and help authorities figure this out.