tv Documentary RT August 6, 2020 5:30pm-6:00pm EDT
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i'll be doing this so they i die and i hope not i hope i have to spend my days going to save dogs and you know you can't save more than a ride by barnes and you look how on earth is a dog's. sad. tara loud to do this to these dogs. i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the cold air the rain the snow the thunder nothing they have no protection yet as soon as we take the dog it's just once the case i mean just you know wants the affection. to get you. know it's ok. to. keep.
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mom and dad will probably live their entire lives on that facility in a pin whether it's smaller or larger size but they're not themselves hence they are breeding stock they they typically don't come in the house and snuggle on the couch. they have no idea what life is is about because they spent 247 in a cage when you came into one of these puppy mills. you would just see one on top
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of another in these little chicken wire crates. you know how cramped it is when you're when you're flying and i was thinking about and i thought it must be like that for the puppy mill dogs that are in these cages being able to get up and move around and i think that the 740 seven's comedy 400 people and i thought it's just like taking 400 golden traverse or labs or shepherds and putting them in a scene shrapnel them in and making them live there for 8 years you will typically smell of facility before you actually walk near the cages and as soon as you can see the cages. i know it's going to be a bad situation when you have the above ground wire bottom cage because that sort of tells us that the person is trying to be very efficient. this is a business people are not from profit for an initial outlay of a couple $100.00 for a few breeding pairs you can be selling puppies for
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a $1000.00 or more apiece if you breed every heat cycle which is not what you're supposed to do but which many millers do you could be making tens of thousands of dollars within a couple of years they were housed in chicken coops take one dog so there is probably more dogs in chicken coop snow days on the road trip. they make money on dogs being born. they rarely see of that. that's are expensive and expensive and that would cut into their profits as far as selling the dogs. it's not good it's really not a good place for going to. find out wrong.
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ill is a night that i was on the internet in some out and they came over me and said i want a puppy so i googled puppies buying barbies online. the delivery person called me to set up a day and time what time the dog would be arriving and he said you know i would like cash upon arrival not a check and that was fine so he would 1st wanted me to meet him at a rest stop off the new jersey turnpike. i just cut him off right there like that was not i'm not and that one day i think this is not happening. i know i know something's are right and that was one of them. i'm not a nervous person i'm not scared of many things but i was nervous because my children were inside and this guy was delivering a puppy 11 o'clock at night in a van that reeked of cigarette smoke i said this is a street my house and i want to have a real address so he said that's fine i'll call you on the street is a poster i run it a clock he scored and said he was running late and he showed up 11 so it was very
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fast he thought he was out front i ran outside a mystery and he got opened his it was a van he opened his van and there is all crates of dogs puppies in the back and he picked out rufus and he said here's your dog. 2 pieces of paper came with the dog that they looked like i could have printed off the computer but that's i didn't know any better so i just assumed it was fine. i brought the dog and it was late so i just put him to play with him for a little bit but he was super tired and he just looked like he wanted to go to sleep so i put his bed in his crate cry was weird because when i had puppies before they cried in a crate the 1st time he didn't make a sound that was like this the best dog every doesn't make noises perfect baby and look up to a dog that was basically having seizures going to the bathroom and throwing. i
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there is going to die. and it that i you know is it's only 24 hours but you bond as a person you just feel super bad for it's a baby in you just want to help it. he starts making this horrific sound like he's yelping in pain out of nowhere like just laying down just making this terrible sound off and on and he said this isn't normal and then he threw up and had diarrhea and i said i'm going to take him to our family that i'm thinking that i can't believe that somebody was and this dog here that sec and this is all the money that we're going to spend and this is crazy because i had no idea what to expect as they said they could stay there for days to get better and i was just i was worried about the money i was worry about the dog at the same time after spending 2 days at northstar parents being treated for hypoglycemia rufus was able to return home at the initial examination the veterinarian the care for rufus certified he was unfit for purchase rufus's cross-country journey began in
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miller's burg ohio on a farm owned by most troyer this is how lame i am after i buy the dog after he's delivered then i start googling most rare then is when i start and then i was like what was wrong with you why wouldn't i really that's how naïve i was i thought it was going to be perfect and then then i start googling and i hindsight was like i need to find out where these parents are like i was disgusted less than 2 weeks before nicole purchased rufus on line tours u.s.d.a. license was cancelled currently no u.s.d.a. or state commercial license is issued for this address i've got like giving up a couple times a i said no one's call me back this is so frustrating but then i kept thinking it wasn't about the money it was the fact that this was a life that no one cared about. they are just like oh take the puppy that was 6 weeks old 5 weeks old away from its mom and to shove it in a van with creeps her and then called a day like no one cared. of
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state highway $53.00 in the middle of ohio this is a puppy mill not unlike the one that rufus was likely born and it's where his parents will remain until they're unable to produce the puppies in profits expected by the owner there's no natural light no human contact except for the red pickup that stops by wanted a discount or food fill water bowls unregulated and under the radar. often we find that on the east coast that many of the puppies are coming from what we call ground 0 for large scale volume bring puppy mill bring and that's holmes county and it is really the heartbeat of where a lot of the puppy mills and a lot of the issues have started in the state of ohio when you consider that they have 43000 population and you have over 500 canales that's
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a lot of camels for the number of people in that general area. and holmes county alone and 200720088 was a $9000000.00 business. now when you consider that the average family income for a family of 4 is probably less than $30000.00 in holmes county that's a considerable amount of on production that is coming out of that particular area in amish country. rufus's journey to new jersey is similar to the one thousands of puppies travel from holmes county ohio in the years since rufus arrived at nicole's house and the driver has made multiple journeys to the east coast delivering puppies sold on the internet from puppy mills throughout holmes county. there's times where we hear where the puppy was actually transported
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by someone just like john public and they load him into a vehicle and so when the puppies arrive it's not unusual to have a vehicle full of puppies and some of those puppies are very sick and some won't make the trip whatsoever they assumed ban puppy mills places they always meant like the mall the puppy store in the mall or the puppy store the inside of st i just never thought that it was like on the internet i really thought when i bought rufus that he was in pennsylvania running through a field happy night didn't think it was a puppy mill dog at all. pennsylvania farmers began breeding dogs probably about 30 or so years ago there were actually breeders in missouri who came up to pennsylvania specifically because of its large amish and mennonite farming communities here we had one of the worst
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states for puppy mills i we were called the puppy mill capital of the east and that was primarily because pennsylvania's number one industry is agriculture. in the mennonites are more likely to view these animals as cash crops as agricultural products we've heard that over and over again and i believe that to be true. not all amish families or not all minimally families breed dogs but the large majority the overwhelming majority of the people that we deal with the breeders are from illinois it was something that farm families could do between when you harvest in the fall and when you planned the spring. as commercial kennels cropped up across pennsylvania in the late 1960 s. the welfare of the dogs trapped in puppy mills was not viewed as a priority of the pennsylvania department of agriculture inspections were few and far between the regulations were ill defined and the program was clearly
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underfunded so the regulators were completely tied by the laws and just to the vagueness of all of them so what we really needed was in forcible measurable standards you would see inspection reports time and time again where a warden is morning operator to do something. and this didn't go on for like one or 2 inspections in a year's time you're talking about years and years of warnings for many of the same offenses there was so much opposition from within the industry itself that the regulations were just going nowhere. and it became very apparent that we had to do a legislative fix. was a pandemic no certainly no borders and islam to nationalities. has
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emerged we don't come with turkey we don't have the facts and the whole world needs to be the chief. judge of 2 this commentary crisis with the sentencing time so we can do better we should. everyone is contributing your own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created with the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we're in it together. the embassy maxwell sucky is one of the most sensational stories of our time however the media coverage appears to be limited to learning details and political
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overtones the single biggest question that needs to be answered is how all this could have happened where was long for spin and will justice be on a search. throughout the years efforts to improve the lives of dogs in pennsylvania puppy mills would ultimately die in the legislature at the hands of powerful lawmakers it was not until a simple billboard was put up in lancaster county that the general public began to learn of the problem our 1st billboard we made it look like a postcard and we had a family in a car and they were all waving across the top and yellow script just like a postcard and said welcome to scenic lancaster county home to hundreds of public mails. we received over 3000 phone calls and e-mails in 2 days and the majority of
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those phone calls came from people who lived in lancaster county who were thanked us for finally doing something about what their neighbors were doing i think the issue gained a lot of traction through the media you know more reporting on the issue it became sort of something that was that was out front it was no longer confined to you know what happened behind doors after witnessing the overwhelming response to their billboards in pennsylvania mainline animal rescue placed a new billboard this time oprah winfrey studio in chicago when we were on oprah and the aftermath we watched up here in the kennel i realized that it really didn't matter what the legislators wanted or what they didn't want because people started contacting us and people were horrified horrified by what was happening in lancaster county it was happening in pennsylvania what was happening in missouri and oklahoma nebraska and they couldn't believe that animals were being treated this way and they wanted to do something about it. this was 100 percent public it
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was really because people were hearing about the plight of puppy mills on the news on oprah reading about it in their newspapers going home and looking in the faces of these little pooches that are sharing their you know tables. bed's very most of us and saying oh my gosh what if that had been my dog and it became very very personal to a huge number of people who started picking up the phones and calling their legislators through this whole struggle and it was a struggle and it was hard it was very very difficult i never lost sight of the fact that the people have the power to change things and when the legislature realized that they did not want to go home in an election cycle and face the constituency wondering why didn't you do something about this the bill got legs and this was a 2 year long is like 2 to 3 year long legislative battle in pennsylvania many of the dogs that the wall was was pushed through many of the law the dogs that we
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wanted to protect are now that so i'm hoping that it's the dogs the future dogs the dogs that are in these places in the future are helped by what we've done but most of the dogs the majority of the dogs that we wanted to help are gone now and they never got the relief that they deserved or that the law enforcement. only union boilermaker out of pittsburgh. despite every free town that i have is basically in their own work and and i'm working a 10 hour shift i'm working on saving dogs. everybody has their own little parts and i think that was that was my call and you know go into the mills and that's what i want them to dogs so i know there are a lot of jobs are covered in your and they're covering and they've got at least what i'd like to do is take and hold all men had on friday never been touched a they ok soem i don't mind they got no room because i want to separate it were different you know you're leaving that life and i want their you know the rehab to
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start as soon as we take the dogs. and it's sad because you can't save all said it hurts i mean there's plenty of nights you stay up at night and you can sleep with a lot of rescues or you know deal with the puppy mill dogs now that i mean loosely you know it's costly running through your mind about the dog you left behind and the one you know i went to the god to bring the dogs that are so many dogs inside the puppy mill that when a dog started barking when he went in to get the dogs the side of the barn was actually shaken and. there's no force of good they suppose he this year and last year in kind of both pennsylvania and ohio made the laws better but there they they passed the laws but no ones in force and. a lot of people think when you say rescue dogs from puppy mills i think we went in to the born down take the dogs but that's that's not always good because the cars
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mills are legal and i think a lot of people don't understand that you know these puppy mills are legal they're allowed to explain to him how you know we wait for the amish to contact you know then we set up a day when we can go get the dogs and then we know will load up the. ours you know them will drive you know made on their property get the dogs. i mean. i don't know about.
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they said all that all that all they want is luggage or yesterday. they're not in i mean. in my name is eugene deep ask well you know i'm the pennsylvania auditor general. we make sure all money is spent legally ineffectively but we also audit state programs so it's not just a question whether the financial side of it is the you know the the account ledgers are matching up but also what is the effectiveness of the program so we get to go in and say ok the money might have been spent legally but was it spent effectively it was a program run effectively while inspections and prosecutions dramatically increased
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after the pennsylvania dog law came into force within a few years noticeable concerns began to emerge i started to receive reports confidentially from within department reaching out to me dog wardens administrators people who had worked for the department and had left that are an area. who were concerned that the new head of the office of dog law had no idea what she was doing so reviewing inspection reports and in 2011. indicates that there were virtually no citations issued just like any other law it's only as good as the enforcement of it and early on in in the law there were some concerns that it wasn't being enforced properly so and so the audit of the dog or program began. in a scathing report auditor general di pascali found the dog law program from its introduction in 2008 through 2012 showed an intentional lack of enforcement of the
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state's dog law and the commercial tennille canine health regulations. enforcing the law in the can mean the partner agriculture said this during the audit that they weren't enforcing it because they knew the kennels weren't complying is say that again they were enforcing it because they knew the kennels weren't complying but the goal of the law is to get people not to do it the goal of the dog was not to find camps it was to get kennels do improve the conditions in their facilities. for the animals that's the goal of the program and we were getting the troops ready to really make a huge deal out of the lack of enforcement of this very popular law and all of a sudden there was a one in 80 of the department and they hired a director of enforcement who was one of the best dog wardens that we've ever seen but here is the big big issue and it's not just his it's anything we do the people matter who are running the programs right now i think the administration made
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significant strides into who is running the program but the people that are actually running the program sometimes you know that their faces bureaucrats to the general public and i understand that but the actual individual who's in charge matters and it's important governors where they began. mark radical republicans they not just put people in because of the considerations but also the qualifications of the individual but i do think that that is the case now that you know top notch professional there and that i think is a big reason why you're starting to see a turnaround in the world. while progress has been made the challenges of regulating and inspecting license to marshal breeders and finding unlicensed breeders in pennsylvania continues in the heart of lancaster county millwood kennel. millwood puppies provides a prime example of the bureaucratic shell game played by some large scale breeders
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. david and iommi stalls fus have been breeding dogs on their property in lancaster county since the early 1990 s. having obtained both a pennsylvania license and a u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license from 2003 onward pennsylvania inspection reports clearly indicate dogs were suffering in a facility that was not meeting even minimal welfare standards after a further string of harangued us inspection reports in 2008 david still sfusd voluntarily relinquish both his pennsylvania and u.s.d.a. license but the dogs remained at the same puppy mill though the name was changed to millwood puppies and ownership passed to david's son matthew stills foose matthew quickly obtained a u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license at the same address. immediately the violations continued under the new license when millwood puppies was inspected in october 2009 the violations were so severe that the commonwealth of pennsylvania brought
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multiple charges against matthew for violations under the dog law. before pennsylvania district judge isaac stalls foose all charges against matthew were summarily withdrawn and all cases closed in 2010. at no time with the dogs removed from the facility by either state or federal authorities. around this time matthew found a new very lucrative avenue to sell his puppies the internet since 2010 it's estimated that matthew has sold over $3000.00 puppies online ranging from 302-2800 dollars each in 2013 alone millwood puppy sold 472 dogs more than a dog a day during this period matthew maintained a pennsylvania kennel license but in january 2014 he applied for a new u.s.d.a. commercial breeders license for millwood puppies l l c this was the 3rd u.s.d.a.
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commercial breeders license and the 2nd pennsylvania license issued for this one address in the past 8 years i think one of the most remarkable things that we actually were able to illustrate on the oprah show that one of the dogs that we picked up from know what chemicals. it was either know what kind of timer millward poppy's was a yellow out a male you know a lab and i'll never forget it it's a really beautiful dog but he had never been off water for some beautiful beautiful young and the amish breeder if you stop astride the dog down the hill we put back the dog up and put a dog in a bit and we put the dog down on the solid floor and in the lobby he started to walk like he had never been here ever going to south or again he started walking up a wall he tried to walk up the wall of our lobby because he had never been on solid before and it's just amazing to me that they would expect an animal to live his or her entire life unpaid for wire flooring and they wouldn't do it themselves.
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matthew's large scale puppy breeding business was not his only interaction with the u.s.d.a. during the same time period he was receiving farm subsidies from the u.s.d.a. the total $56624.00 in commodity subsidies associated with. his dairy farm lancaster county pennsylvania has a total population of a little over 536000 residents from 1995 to 2012 farmers in the county have received 100 $28000000.00 in taxpayer funded farm subsidies from the u.s.d.a. . an extensive investigation for this film found numerous examples of u.s.d.a. license commercial breeders receiving multiple violations from the animal health of vision on one hand and large taxpayer funded farm subsidies on the other while the programs are viewed as distinct and separate by the u.s.d.a. the fact remains that license commercial breeders with multiple dog welfare
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violations continue to receive taxpayer funded farm subsidies in lancaster county and many other rural areas throughout the united states these commercial breeders are exploiting a federal agency by receiving a taxpayer funded handout while simultaneously receiving major violations for failing the dogs in their care. their seed maxwell saga is one of the most sensational stories of our time however media coverage appears to be limited to details. the single biggest question that needs to be answered is how this could have happened where was law enforcement and will justice be served.
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a short time ago an american airplane. hiroshima. not claim any even something to go. chin it's. like most americans growing up after the war the bombs were a great thing they ended the war they say hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides and that's what my grandfather always said mrs reason for the decision. truman was hoping for a dual strategy one was to drop the bombs and hope that japan would surrender and number 2 the americans were trying to send a message to the soviet union there was an american war plenty in october $145.00 shows and 20 targets and russia.
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greetings and salutation with millions across the united states facing eviction is over 150000 u.s. citizens no longer with us due to the u.s. government's abject failure in responding to the cold with 19 pandemic and weather experts now predicting hurricane season is set to unleash at least 13 brutal hurricanes on u.s. shores in the coming months i bet with all of that you cannot guess where the priority of the united states congress.
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