Puppy mills

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

Sixty surviving dogs, among 75 seized in January from
breeder Inocente Dominguez Morales of Harlingen, Texas, were to be
auctioned on May 25, “as ordered by Cameron County Justice of the
Peace David A. Wise, much to the dismay of the Harlingen Humane
Society,” said South Texas Animal Sanctuary president Bob Sobel.
“The ruling to sell the abused animals and award half the proceeds to
the abuser is a blemish on the enforcement of anti-cruelty laws,”
Sobel continued. “There was no penalty, no fine, no admonition to
compel future observance.” Wise invoked an old law which pertained
originally to the sale of strayed cattle. The Wise verdict did not
apply to about 25 dogs held by the South Texas Animal Sanctuary in a
related case, seized a day after the Harlingen raid from the Puppies
“R” Us franchise owned by Patrick Scott Kingsbury in Weslaco,
Hidalgo County.

A fire at a puppy breeding kennel owned by David and Colleen
Krug, of Valrico, Florida, killed 24 silky terriers, Shih Tzus,
and Chinese crested hairless dogs on May 9, 15 days after a fire
killed 48 Chihuahuas at a breeding kennel owned by Colleen Freeman,
64, of Lakeland. Colleen Krug and her sister Rebecca Williams
rescued 22 puppies from the fire, but lost several of their older
prize-winning show dogs. Twenty-two dogs also survived the Lakeland
fire, but Freeman–who claimed to have exhibited dogs in the
past–was jailed in lieu of $70,000 bail (later reduced to $20,000)
after firefighters “found the dogs in narrow 12-inch-high plastic
cages that had been stacked on top of one another,” and “had a
layering of feces up to eight inches thick in some cages, covered
with paper,” reported John Chambliss of The Lakeland Ledger.