Last episode, we were talking about how some pet stores were facing extinction.

And some new laws were being written to stop pet stores from selling commercially-bred

puppies altogether.

But the intended target of these laws was not pet stores.

The intended target was actually puppy mills, for-profit breeders who are known to treat

puppies poorly, and where many pet stores often got their puppies from.

But what exactly is a puppy mill?

We all like to think we know.

Before learning about them, I assumed puppy mills were big warehouses of puppies crammed

into cages, and that the owner must not care about animals in order to let them get treated

that way.

But deciding what a puppy mill is isn't that cut and dry.

So we're going to take this episode to go along and see what a puppy mill can be like.

There's some graphic details, and some things that might be tough for some listeners to

hear.

But these are the kinds of places that breed thousands of dogs that end up in our homes.

So it felt important to take a closer look, and get an idea of the types of places Jo-Lynn

could be buying her puppies from.

The person who introduced me to this particular puppy mill case was Sybil Sukah.

She's the executive director of the Humane Society of North Iowa.

They've got an animal shelter for neglected pets that need to find a home.

She's giving me and my producer Natalie a tour of the place.

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