– Eighty-three puppies were taken from a pet store in Solano County, Calif., and the owners arrested after customers reported that puppies they had bought from the store were either sick or died.

 

– In North Platte, Neb., 85 dogs were seized from a puppy mill where they were living in wire cages and fed only milk. No charges were filed.

 

– Outside Burns, Ore., more than 130 fearful dogs found exposed to extreme cold were rescued. They’re being adopted out to new homes.

 

–In Schuylkill County, Penn., authorities raided a puppy mill and seized more than 75 dogs suffering from rotten teeth, ailing feet and infected ears.

 

–A Tampa, Fla., woman who’d been banned from owning dogs was found to have 20 of them in her house. The dogs had coccidia, whipworms, cataracts, and hair loss and were covered with feces.

 

–In Dubbs, Miss., a house trailer containing 20 dehydrated and starving dogs caught fire, killing two of them. The rest of the dogs were removed.

 

–In Minnesota, a breeder convicted of animal cruelty and torture lost her federal license to breed and sell dogs — unless she’s selling them on the Internet. In what is a major loophole in the fight to curtail puppy mills, the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t regulate direct sales to customers. Kathy Bauck was arrested after video shot by an undercover investigator for the Companion Animal Protection Society showed her dunking extremely thin and ill dogs into a vat of insecticide designed to be used on pigs. Bauck had also sold hundreds of sick dogs to pet stores. Inexplicably, she was also permitted to keep her dogs.

 

But as they say in 12-step programs, there’s always hope. I’ll tell you why in my next blog.