continue today.
Capitalizing on post-war disposable income, dogs were offered for commercial sale. The first pet stores opened and puppies were put in store windows to lure customers. As is the case today, consumers wanted the breeds they saw in film, on television, and in the hands of matinee idols. For example, after the release of the film Lassie Come Home in 1943, the popularity of the collie increased by 60 percent during the next decade. The release of the movie The Shaggy Dog, in 1959, did the same for Old English sheepdogs, and this scenario played out countless times over the following decades.3
To satisfy demand, breeders quickly farmed and transported dogs. And dogs, legally property, became the new cash crop. Overhead costs were kept low in the “manufacturing process,” and profits soared. It was a win-win for farmers and retailers, and consumers had easy access to whatever dog breed was in vogue.
In 1953, Patti Page recorded the song “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” complete with barking sounds. The song, written by Bob Merrill and released by Mercury Records, hit Number 1 on both Billboard and Cashbox charts in 1953. Its single sold two million copies. Its chorus is unforgettable:
How much is that doggie in the window?
The one with the waggly tail
How much is that doggie in the window?
I do hope that doggie’s for sale
This song celebrated the pure joy of a cute, loyal dog who protects his owner and provides companionship. It became the symbol of the premise that the pet store dog was the best thing in the world and that everyone should have one. Owning a dog from a pet shop was also thought of as a status symbol. In 1997, the song was adapted into a children’s book, How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?, retold and illustrated by Iza Trapani, in which a little boy tries to save his entire allowance and chore money in order to purchase a “doggie in the window.” Again, the iconic song encouraged and romanticized the purchase of a pet shop dog rather than the adoption of a shelter dog.
“Cheap to produce, expensive to buy” was the song the farmers were singing.
Over the years, the song “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” organically morphed into the anthem of activists who were decrying the dark side of puppy mills and who begged people to adopt from crowded shelters rather than buy from puppy mills. At issue for them was the inhumanity of the pet industry and the fact that healthy dogs were being euthanized for reasons related to time, space, and a lack of families to adopt them.
The anti–puppy-mill sentiment that became associated with the song upset Patti Page so much that in 2009 she recorded a new version of the song titled “Do You See That Doggie in the Shelter?” Its lyrics were written by Chris Gantry and the rights for it were given to the Humane Society of the United States. The new version confronts the existence and practices of puppy mills and answers the question “how much” with “too much.” In 2009, Patti Page was quoted by the Humane Society as saying:
The original song asks the question: “How much is that doggie in the window?” Today, the answer is “too much.” And I don’t just mean the price tag on the puppies in pet stores. The real cost is in the suffering of the mother dogs back at the puppy mill. That’s where most pet store puppies come from. And that kind of cruelty is too high a price to pay.4
The lyrics of “Do You See That Doggie in the Shelter?” were set to the same tune as the original version. It spoke of the dogs across the country without homes and owners to protect them, and who are lost and go hungry until rescued by a shelter.
Its catchy chorus is:
Do you see that doggie in the shelter
the one with the take me home eyes
If you give him your love and attention
he will be your best friend for life
While the public was celebrating its easy access to designer dogs, as the happy, tail-wagging music played on, back at the farms horrible things were happening. The original puppy farmers, who came from a background of agricultural crop farming and were not dog-breeding experts, treated the dogs like livestock rather than companion animals and figured out early on that the less they invested in good food, veterinary care, and husbandry, the higher their profits would be. They gave no regard to the health of mother dogs, which they bred constantly, or to genetic pool diversity. They also spent as little as possible to care for puppies during their transportation to pet stores. If some puppies died during transport, the price of the survivors would be raised so that the profit wouldn’t be hurt.
The term “puppy mill,” while colloquially used during the post-war period, wasn’t formally introduced into legal vernacular until a 1984 Minnesota court case, Avenson v. Zegart, 577 F. Supp. 958. The plaintiffs in the case had been operating a dog-breeding business in Hubbard County, Minnesota, when, in March of 1982, they came to the attention of Lesley Zegart, then executive director of the Minnesota Humane Society, who was investigating dog-breeding businesses in Minnesota to determine which ones were operating as puppy mills. The term “puppy mills” got an official on-the-record definition in the courts’ statement of facts, which defined it as “a dog breeding operation in which the health of the dogs is disregarded in order to maintain a low overhead and maximize profits.” This characterization was true from the onset of puppy mills through the time of the 1984 case and continues to be true today.
The retailers the farmers shipped the dogs to were no better at caring for the dogs than they were. They too were out to make the highest profit margins possible, and they too crammed as many dogs into cages as they could and avoided paying for high-quality food or medical care. In effect they became minimills. If puppy deaths during transportation led to low inventory, that is, scarce “crop,” or they had to pay more to farmers because of this, they, too, simply raised their prices to make up for it. Costs were passed to the consumer.
Many dogs died within days of arrival at a shop or purchase by a consumer. Yet stores were not legally obligated to provide refunds for the purchase cost or the medical bills incurred by grief-stricken consumers. Decades later, this persistent bad behavior inspired the passage of dog and cat “lemon laws” and “puppy/kitten mill warranty laws” in some states. These laws required refunds, reimbursement for medical bills, husbandry standards, and mandatory documentation of the source of each pet and its medical status—a customer bill of rights, if you will. Later in this book you will see actual cases involving these issues.
It is critical to note that although a puppy may survive early challenges and appear healthy, problems caused in the breeding process often manifest later in life, for example, medical disabilities, congenital problems, and incurable pain or discomfort. Sometimes an entire litter shares the same condition. Customers saddled with ongoing medical bills are often excluded from pet insurance protection policies, as many of the problems are considered preexisting conditions. The Affordable Care Act legislated against excluding coverage, or price gauging for coverage of people deemed to have preexisting conditions by insurance companies, but there is no such law governing pet insurance. Often when these costs are too burdensome, the pets are abandoned.
In the 1950s, stores like Sears, Roebuck and Company, and F. W. Woolworth Company started to get in on the action, featuring window dogs to attract customers, who bought other items as well once they were in the store. One could even order dogs from the Sears catalogue, foreshadowing the ability to order sight unseen from the internet.
What did department stores know about housing and caring for live animals? Not much more than anyone else at either end of the supply chain. I still remember the section of the Woolworth store that had what seemed like hundreds of little birds for sale crammed
