The History of the Puppy Mill Industry 
. A puppy mill is generally defined as: “a dog breeding operation in which
the health of the dogs is disregarded in order to maintain a low overhead and maximize
profits.” Avenson v Zegart, 577 F. Supp. 958, 960 (D. Minn. 1984).
. Puppy mills are, in part, the unfortunate result of an exploited economic
recovery concept implemented in the late 1940s to assist rural Midwestern farmers who
were suffering widespread crop failures. These were among the first commercial puppy
breeding kennels.
 The market for these mass-produced puppies was created at that time
through major department store chains like Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward
who began selling puppies during the 1950s.
 From this market, large scale specialty retail pet stores were born, including
Petland.
. These puppy breeding operations soon morphed into an assembly line
manufacturing process where commercial breeders sought to maximize profits by
producing the largest possible quantity of puppies without regard for the health and
welfare of the breeder dogs or their puppies.
 To operate this puppy production line, female dogs are bred at every
opportunity without sufficient recovery time between litters. Once these breeding
females are physically depleted to the point they lose the ability to reproduce, they are
generally destroyed using inhumane methods. Thus, following a cruel life of breeding
litters upon litters of puppies, the sire and dam of that puppy mill puppy is highly
unlikely to ever make it out of the mill alive.
 While alive and forced to reproduce, the breeding female and her puppies
are confined to a wire cage barely large enough to turn around in, sometimes exposed to
the elements, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred sixty-five
days a year. These cages are frequently stacked upon one another in columns to conserve space so the puppy mill can maximize its number of breeding females, and therefore,  its production of puppies. These cages in which the breeding female spends her entire life,and the puppies’ first several weeks of life, are floored with wire mesh to facilitate waste