Subject: DawnWatch: Four part TV series on puppy mill/pet store link --
Miami 2/7/06 --2/9/06

This week, NBC 6 in Miami is doing a four part series linking a popular pet
store to hideous puppy mills. The first three parts are available on line.
Those in Miami can watch the fourth part at 6pm this evening (Thursday
February 9) with a follow-up at 11pm. The rest of us can watch it on the
station's website tomorrow.

The first two pieces focus almost exclusively on consumer fraud -- people
being sold sick puppies. But the third piece is terrific, letting people
know what they support when they buy pet store puppies, regardless of the
luck they have with the particular dog's health. It traces the puppies,
which the Wizard of Claws pet store advertises as coming from fine breeders
with exceptionally high standards, to a puppy mill in Missouri.

A tour of that puppy mill reveals frantic dogs in tiny cages. The voiceover
says,

"We were shown dogs in cages, and these cowering dogs in a wooden hutch.
These two are breeding stock. They look terrified of people. The water bowl
as you can see right there is frozen over from the temperatures in the teens
last night. There is no visible sign of heating element back there; they are
shaking right now and the morning sun has already been up for about an hour
or two."

Wayne Pacelle of HSUS is shown the video and comments, "What we saw in your
video were dogs who were too frightened to come or were just manic, wanting
attention. Their feet don't touch the earth, they are standing on wire.
There engaging in repetitive motion and at the point of even going a little
mad."

When the pet store owner is shown the video he says that the puppy mill
should be reported and it is not a place he would buy a dog from. But indeed
he is buying dogs from them and pretending to his customers that he is
careful about the source of his dogs.

Hopefully many people watching this story and learning a little about puppy
mills will not only steer clear of that particular pet store, Wizard of
Claws, but will entirely rethink the purchase of puppies. Jeff Burnside, the
reporter doing the current series, tells me has a piece coming up on our pet
overpopulation crisis, and the NBC 6 website includes links to many humane
societies and adoption groups.

Apparently the story is receiving much attention, some of it national, which
makes it worthwhile for the station to stay focused on the issue with
follow-ups. Please take a look at the story and send your thanks to Jeff
Burnside and the NBC 6 team in Miami. Positive feedback for animal friendly
stories gives reporters license to do more of them.

The print version of the story is on line at
http://www.nbc6.net/nbc6investigates/6853389/detail.html

You can click the link to the video from that page, or the following will
take you right to the video of the third part in the series, which includes
the puppy mill footage: http://tinyurl.com/8j3er

"NBC 6 Investigates" takes comments at nbc6.investigates@nbc.com. Please
send a quick note.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in
the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets.
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