No Puppy Mills.


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Marching on a puppy mill

Published: Sep 17, 2005 9:37 PM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Thirty-one years after starring in ?The Exorcist,? Linda Blair is still out to shock people.

Blair, who played a demon-possessed child in the 1974 creepy classic, is active these days in exposing a horror of a different kind: puppy mills, or dog-breeding facilities that crank out puppies in large quantities for the public, brokers or pet shops.

Many such mills are associated with Amish and Mennonite farms, and the actress was in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country Saturday as part of Puppy Mill Awareness Day, an event designed to spotlight Lancaster County?s reputation as a puppy mill center.

?The Amish do many other things that are good,? she said while busy working a crowd of animal-lovers in Intercourse Community Park. ?Let them do that. Let the animals go.?

Blair joined actor Chris DeRose, founder of Last Chance for Animals animal protection agency, Rikki Rockett of 1980s heavy metal band Poison, and film director Amanda Sorvino at the park, which hosted a contingent of dog owners who evoked exclamations of delight over canine companions, expressions of outrage over conditions at puppy mills and a vocal determination to do something about them.

?We?re taking this to a federal level,? said DeRose, who founded Last Chance for Animals in 1984. He decried the state?s ?lack of enforcement ? I should say no enforcement ? as to the condition of animals.? He called Pennsylvania ?the puppy mill state of the union.?

It?s not something Harrisburg native Rockett is proud of. ?I don?t want my home to be known as the place that?s cruel to animals,? he said of the central Pennsylvania region in a speech to the crowd of about 100. Elizabethtown resident Cindy Gish agreed, saying she sometimes feels that ?it?s embarassing to say I live here.?

Tears and shouts

Though Blair, Rockett and Sorvino, (daughter of actor Paul Sorvino) lent star power to Saturday?s gathering, the day?s drama had nothing to do with stage or screen. At one point, a truck pulled up to one of the park pavillions, depositing more than 40 dogs from a local mill whose owner, according to organizers, surrendered them to a contingent of Puppy Mill Awareness Day participants.

?They?re throwing up. They?re scared,? said one woman, shaking her head at the sight of the filthy, underfed-looking poodle-airdale mixed dogs. ?It?s not a pretty picture.?

Some onlookers choked back tears. Others stroked the dogs, assuring them they were safe. Actress Blair zeroed in with a video camera.

?A lot of it is a cash business,? said activist DeRose, as to why people run puppy mills. ?They?re not paying taxes on it.?

?Supply and demand is the problem? agreed Claudine Wilkins, an attorney from Atlanta, Ga. She said area puppy mills have grown by ?60 more in one year ... We?re talking thousands of dogs here.?

Blair has made animal rescue something of a full-time career. Though busy with filming an upcoming television series, ?Scariest Places on Earth,? she admitted she spends a large portion of her time ?hooked to the phone and computer, cutting through the horrible red tape? of animal rights causes.

She plans to head south to the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina, where stranded pets have drawn almost as much attention as the plight of human victims of the storm.

Blair also heads a foundation, Linda Blair Worldheart, which targets pet overpopulation and breeders who raise dogs for fighting. Blair?s foundation also endorses ?Tag 19,? an awareness campaign which takes its name from a book detailing one puppy mill dog?s survival.

?This is my campaign ? Tag 19,? she said, noting her T-shirt sporting the name.

Director Sorvino said her involvement with animal rights began with her first dog, which was purchased from a pet shop.

?We realized he was a mill dog, and that?s how we found out about puppy mills,? she said. Voicing regret over her father being unable to appear at Saturday?s event due to a contractual obligation, she said that Paul Sorvino, a Pennsylvania resident who lives in the Pocono region, ?is almost injured by what?s going on here.?

Pet shops, said DeRose, can be an unlikely enemy of dogs, as many buy animals from puppy mills. ?You?re responsible for another dog that died when people buy a dog from a pet store,? said DeRose, who urged potential dog owners to go to shelters or a breed rescue organization to find a pet.

But DeRose and many at the event didn?t confine their outrage to words. Despite the day?s heat and humidity, several dozen trooped up Route 340 to the farm of Daniel Esh, whose dog-breeding business has been targeted by animal rights activists and the has been subject of several local newspaper articles.

?No more puppy mills! No more puppy mills!? they chanted at the edge of Esh?s property, as passing motorists honked their car horns in support.

?He covered up his sign!? said Margaret Hottenstein, of the animal rights group United Against Puppy Mills, pointing to a tarp-covered advertisement for dogs sold on the premises.

At one point, a Plain man walked into the driveway of the farm, put his hands on his hips, and turned and walked away.

But Esh wasn?t the only target. The idea was to make a visible presence in Intercourse, a town which makes its living marketing to tourists visiting the county, a place, dog lovers said, that also makes money at the expense of suffering animals.

?We want to create a stir,? said marcher Ginny Whiskeyman, of Lititz.

?Wake up, Lancaster County.?

http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/17132

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