Why spend up to $1500 to $2000 or more

at a pet store for a pooch that is possibly genetically unsound, disease ridden and ill acclimated to humans when you can get one just as unfit for only $300 or $400 from a puppy mill online? Plus you have the additional benefit of not even being able to see the actual dog you are purchasing in real life in order to ascertain its health and personality.

How can you tell if you are buying from a genuine puppy mill online?

Admittedly it is sometimes a little difficult to differentiate a reputable breeder's site from a puppy mill site. But, the money you can save is worth the difference. Reputable breeders usually charge far more for an AKC registered puppy than do puppy mills.

Here is what to look for.

Puppy mills will offer a lot more breeds than breeders who usually specialize in one or just a few breeds. Thus if you see a lot of selection you can tell you are probably looking at a puppy mill web site or online listing and the seller mass breeds lots of puppies to keep the price low for you!

Also to keep costs low on some sites the puppy mill site will use the same picture when listing different individual puppies of the same breed. They know a buyer will never be able to tell if the pooch he bought is the one seen in the picture online. It is much more efficient for the puppy mill to do this because everyone knows all puppies of one species look alike.

Puppy Mills always have little puppies to sell breeders and animal shelters don't.

That is because they know the secret of mass breeding for fast marketing, thus assuring a perpetual supply of cute little puppies. Unless you are lucky a reputable breeder will not have a supply of puppies when you want one. That means you may have to waste your valuable time contacting several breeders, or even wait until a breeder has a new litter.

Is high volume the only way puppy mills keep costs down?

No, getting two or more litters of puppies a year from each female breeder is only one way. Puppy mills keep their dogs living close together. Since dogs are social animals they enjoy being packed into small areas. If you visit a puppy mill you can hear the happy barking of dogs all the time.

Compare this with the practice of most reputable dog breeders who erroneously think that large roomy kennels and plenty of exercise is what dogs need. That is just pampering dogs and the result is extra cost that you as a consumer pay for when you buy a puppy. Plus, if the dogs at a reputable breeder are so happy, why don't they bark louder than those at a puppy mill.

If puppy mills are so good, why don't I see them listed as puppy mills?

Quite frankly, most don't advertise as puppy mills. That is because all sorts of do gooders who don't understand the beauty of mass breeding of dogs for profit without conscience want to shut puppy mills down.

Thankfully the AKC doesn't seem to care how many puppies a puppy mill registers as purebred, all they care about is that the mother and father dog are of the same breed. Otherwise they could make it difficult for puppy mills to sell unhealthy, disease ridden, genetically inferior puppies as pure bred dogs. That would drive the cost up to the consumer and the AKC might lose some revenue.

What else should I know about buying a puppy from a puppy mill?

The odds are you will have the fun of socializing your new puppy to humans and allowing it to experience walking on the earth for the first time and probably being outdoors for the first time. Those things are a fringe benefit of the mass produced way puppies are raised.

Imagine the joy you will miss if you buy a dog from an established breeder, or even adopt one from an animal shelter. The odds are a puppy from either of those kind of places will have had some socialization and been outdoors. It will not have to be taught how to walk on the ground, or that he doesn't need to neurotically bark all the time.