Despite the commitment of major pet stores in the United States to let local shelters use their stores to promote animal adoption, a shadowy industry of puppy mills still persists.
Imprisoned female dogs are kept in cages, forcibly impregnated and made to give birth to litter after litter, and denied any veterinary care until they die from exhaustion. And most, if not all, of the operations find a way to work within U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations for “breeding livestock.”
The organization’s birth was directly connected to Lily’s rescue, which took place in February 2007, when Strader received an email regarding “50 Italian Greyhounds in need.” The email was from a breeding kennel auctioning off its “stock” of 561 dogs, including 49 Italian greyhounds, as it closed its doors. The operation’s owner, Martha, was going to quit working. “Time to retire and relax after four decades of mistreating dogs,” Strader ruefully noted.
Though Strader had been adopting rescued animals for years and had seen plenty of dogs in a bad way, nothing had prepared her for the horrors of that greyhound puppy mill. When she arrived, Strader saw “[h]undreds of terrified ailing faces, imprisoned in their wire confines,” she wrote, “some staring at me, but most too fearful to look into my eyes, so unsure of how to interpret human contact.”
Strader would end up adopting 13 dogs that day, including Lily. As she wrote to Martha, “Not a single dog that I had cared for in over 25 years of rescue work came anywhere close to the physical and emotional damage that your dogs had suffered.” Lily was the worst case of all, a symbol of the shame that Strader felt the mill’s owner should have experienced.
Lily was listed as dog #251 at the auction. As for her name, that was already an indication of the mistreatment she had suffered. “Oh, the irony of her name—Swift Motion—an Italian Greyhound who was never able to run,” Strader wrote. “Caging her for her entire life stripped her of ever having enough strength in her legs to experience the joy of running. A cruel reality for a breed built to run.”
In her open letter, Strader castigated the dog breeder for treating Lily this way. “I wonder how many died in your care from the results of this condition. I wonder if you even noticed,” she wrote. “I’m very certain you did notice one thing beyond the rotting faces though—their ability to produce puppies.”
After rescuing Lily and the other dogs from the puppy mill, Strader made it her life’s mission to put a stop to these unethical practices and give mill dogs what they really deserve: “A good meal, a warm and comfortable place to sleep, medical attention, and most of all, a human companion to make their lives whole,” she said.
Despite everything that Strader and her family did over the next few months to make Lily comfortable, permanent damage had been done. “I will always be bothered that she never learned how to run or really how to play,” she added. “But she learned how to love and be loved and for that, there are no words.”
Lily passed away at 8 years, less than half the time that an Italian greyhound treated well could expect to live. But the experience lit a fire under Strader. Since Lily’s rescue in 2007, the organization has gone on to place over 13,000 mill dogs in loving homes. And none of it ever would have happened without Lily.
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