Thorp, Wisconsin

At last count in Wisconsin there are 53 USDA licensed puppy mills, 23 in Clark County.
Puppy mills are mass breeding facilities; dogs bred and sold purely for commercial gain to mostly brokers and pet stores.
Puppy millers warehouse the dogs in small cages or pens with little positive human contact. Many are stacked several in a cage, one on top of the other. It can be years before parents set foot on ground.
Twice a year in Clark County many of these dogs are sold. The buyers; brokers who buy dogs at a low cost, then turn around and sell them for a higher cost, and puppy millers looking for the next breed to re-produce and sell.
"The real problem is everybody sees those puppies and that's why they sell like hotcakes in pet stores, behind the scenes is the true suffering and the misery and it goes on for years and years, " said Chuck Wegner, Executive Director of the Clark County Humane Society. "They've never been petted, they've never been held, they're scared to death of grass when you set them down, they don't know what it is, all sorts of things like that," said Wegner.
Wegner said among puppies being sold at the auction, parents. "You probably will rarely see a dog at an auction that is over 6 years old. The reasons is they're burned out, they're no good for breeding because they breed them every heat cycle litter after litter until they cant produce anymore. Than rather than finding them a good home and doing one decent thing, they'll bring them to a dog auction and squeeze that last 50 bucks out of them if they can," said Wegner.
Also present at the Thorp auction, Representative Jeff Smith. Smith is a lawmaker who says he's going to do what he can to pass legislation to end puppy mills in the state.
"We saw a lot of fearful dogs cowering in the corner of cages, and these are the older dogs who I think have been through it all, and I think they have been some kind of premonition of what's going to happen here," said Smith.
"I hope to take a lead push something that can actually pass, we have a lot of support, we have a lot of support based on both sides of the isle and geographically, and I think the time has come," said Smith.
For more information on the Thorp dog auction and puppy mills, log onto http://www.cchs-petshelter.org or http://www.nowisconsinpuppymills.com .