Los Angeles Puppy Mill Bust. The survivors.

After a nineteen week-long investigation of puppy mills and pet stores by Last Chance for Animals, World Kennel USA, a puppy mill in Littlerock, CA, was raided. They were ordered to relinquish three hundred dogs by May 8th. Many of the breeding dogs were dumped by the owners of World Kennel at the Lancaster shelter. Best Friends Animal Society, Last Chance for Animals and Animal Alliance banded together to save the dogs. Rather than face the gauntlet of media, which besieged the Lancaster shelter, World Kennel owners relinquished some of their “breeding stock” directly to this coalition of animal welfare organizations. The dogs were transported to Los Angeles and immediately triaged for vet care and placed in an undisclosed safe-house to be cared for by trusted volunteers. Their injuries are evidence of severe neglect and abuse.
The investigation and rescue efforts were complex and difficult but the worst is over. Best Friends Animal Society has taken a leading role in rehabilitating these dogs and this is the story of their rescue and recovery through the eyes of a partially blind breeder mom. She is emaciated, injured and traumatized and we are helping her through her first steps outside of a cage into a world of love and understanding. Her name is Millie, named after the terrible place she came from, a puppy mill.

My name is Millie, short for Puppy Mill Dog.

My name is Millie, short for Puppy Mill Dog. Before today, I was just a number—# 27. I worked in a dog factory called World Kennel USA making puppies for the boss. There were four hundred and two of us there making puppies for the factory. We thought we’d never get out of there alive. But some of us did and this is our story.
I don’t know how old I am, no one has ever celebrated my birthday, but I must be getting pretty old because they forced me to have at least fifty puppies. I heard my babies fetched $3000 in fancy pet stores in Los Angeles. To me, they were worth much more than money, whatever that is. Humans must really want that money stuff badly to keep us in cages for our whole lives while they sell our babies.

Whenever I gave birth, just when my babies were beginning to see; the World Kennel humans would drag them away screaming before they were ready to be weaned. It broke my heart not be able to snuggle them, smell them and care for them. I hope all my puppies are happy somewhere and I dream that I can see them again someday. Maybe someone who bought my babies will read this story and reunite us, even for an hour. It would make me so happy to know they are safe. I hope that somebody out there reading this will rescue the rest of my friends still in puppy mill prison.

I don’t want you to be sad reading my story because I got rescued four days ago thanks to some really nice two legged folks at Last Chance for Animals, Best Friends Animal Society and Animal Alliance. I had no idea there were nice humans out there beyond the chain link fence in Littlerock, California. Now I know there are a LOT of nice humans. And because of these nice people, I have been let out of my cage for the first time in my life. For the first time, I walked on the grass. I can stretch my legs. I haven’t run yet, my legs are atrophied but I will. I’m going to run on the grass.

For the first time in my life, someone petted me. No one had ever petted me before.

I can’t believe how beautiful the sky is when you’re not looking at it through wire bars—uninterrupted sky. Freedom. I’m crying for joy because I’m free. Thank you, nice people, thank you.


Please look at the news reports of the puppy mill I came from here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0WaAkVaHUSQ

And here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=3wNUfMrXsCU&feature=related

And now, my foster mom is taking me to bed. A bed, I’m learning, is a soft, endless expanse of coziness. I’ll dream of my puppies, of my old friends we had to leave behind and of my new exciting life.


Written by Millie, as told to Carole Raphaelle Davis, actress and author of “ The The Diary of Jinky, Dog of a Hollywood Wife.” Carole’s website: http://www.hollywoodjinky.com/