Puppy Barn. The beloved store and attraction in American Fork, Utah where unaware people looking to give a home to a puppy may do so. But there are strings attached.
Walking into Puppy Barn you see seprate breeds in unprotected cages with a lining on the bottom, water, food, and a toy. Each litter is separated in different cages. It sounds, and frankly, it looks innocent. But it is not.
There is little-to-no supervision as to who is handling the dogs. They place a sign expressing you must be at least 18 to handle the puppies. (Although I played with them multiple times while I was 15, unaware, unsupervised.) You are asked to always have hand sanitizer applied while changing from litter to litter, playing with the dogs. I can testify, though, that this is not properly enforced. There are way too many people handling the young puppies, with newly developing immune systems.
Another problem is that in this last year(2015), it has been a hot spot for teenagers. Unknowing people looking for a fun activity handle these puppies daily. It has even become a hot-spot for dates.
Puppy barn purchases many of their pups off of KSL.com from random breeders and puppy mills. I'm sure you're not surprised to hear that the majority of their puppies are weened from their mother way, way too early for them to be healthy. Puppy Barn doesn't look at the medical history of the parents of the puppies they will be purchasing. In many occasions they have also advertised puppies as purebred, when they are actually mixed breeds. Selling them for hundreds more dollars than necessary; AKC prices. Why do they feel they must hide it? For the money. Which seems to be all this business cares about.
Just walking in and checking out the puppies you can see many have bloated bellies (worms), diarrhea, and on one occasion I've seen a young chihuahua vomiting, and not casually. Other reviews on Yelp.com say, "Another had goop in it's eyes and nose. (...) As I listened to the employees, none of them were telling anyone the responsibilities of taking care of a puppy. Just making sure everyone knew there were no refunds". Responsible breeders and organizations such as Caws.org take back the animal if it is not working out, because they actually care about the well being of their animals.
There have been frequent reports of Parvo, a life threatening and very contagious disease. Not surprising when people are constantly jumping from dog to dog.
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| A screenshotted review from Facebook posted on Yelp.com.
One of lots of tragedies occurring because of Puppy Barn.
Other problem is the secrecy. If you post on their Facebook page asking a question such as, "Where do you get your puppies?" they delete it. They know what they are doing is wrong and unethical, but as long as they are making money they don't care. If you call them they claim they purchase them from "local breeders", but if you ask any more questions they get nervous and can't give you a straight and true answer.
There are many, many other reasons why this place needs to go.
Please take 30 seconds to sign this petition to shut down Puppy Barn. We only need 814 more to get to 7,500.
For more reviews visit: http://www.yelp.com/biz/puppy-barn-american-fork
For more information or just to support the cause follow @StopPuppyBarn on Twitter.
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