Scarlett, a Maltese, was rescued from a puppy mill, prompting her owner, Bridgett Rowley, to work to stop the commercial breeding facilities from operating. (Photo provided by Bridgett Rowley)
COLUMBIA — When Bridgett Rowley adopted a 6-month-old puppy rescued from a busted dog breeding operation, the Maltese not only sickly and had matted hair, but she didn’t understand human touch.
“I had to teach her how to cuddle,” the Charleston dog owner told senators Thursday. “It was so sad.”
A proposal in the state Senate would require dog breeders to get licenses in an effort to cut down on the sort of overbreeding and neglect Rowley’s dog, Scarlett, faced. Although Scarlett came from North Carolina, the same practices are happening over the border, Rowley and other animal rights advocates said Thursday.
The aim is to eliminate puppy mills, which churn out dogs with little vetting and no oversight, said Sen. Deon Tedder, the bill’s primary sponsor. Senators did not vote on the bill Thursday but plan to take it up again in the coming weeks.
Dogs found at commercial breeding operations are often underfed, filthy and sickly. Female dogs are forced to give birth to as many puppies as possible to turn a profit for the owners without time to heal, then discarded when they can no longer reproduce, said Janell Gregory, South Carolina director for nonprofit Humane World for Animals.
People getting puppies from such breeders often don’t know the conditions the dogs are breeding in and wind up with a sick, unvaccinated and unvetted puppy, which Tedder called “puppy fraud.”
“You assume that you’re getting what you’re paying for,” said the North Charleston Democrat. “But in reality, most times these have been abused animals who don’t have current vaccination records, they have not seen a veterinarian, and they have issues.”
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The number of puppy mills in the state is unclear.
Without regulations, there’s no way to track who is breeding dogs, animal rights advocates said Thursday. South Carolina isn’t a hub for commercial dog breeding the way some states are, but that doesn’t mean it’s not taking place, Gregory said.
The bill would allow state officials to track where breeders are located and enforce standards in their care. South Carolina would join 35 states with laws about commercial pet breeding, according to Michigan State University’s Animal Legal and Historical Center.
Under the South Carolina bill, anyone who owned 10 or more unspayed female dogs or sold more than 15 puppies each year would have to apply for a license to operate.
That process would include an inspection of the breeding facility, submission of veterinary records for all dogs and a background check to make sure the owner didn’t have any past charges of animal cruelty. The goal is to ensure breeding is safe for the animals.
“We don’t have any guardrails in place for us to require breeders to maintain ethical standards,” Gregory said.
Existing animal cruelty laws can punish breeders once someone notifies law enforcement of abuse or neglect. But the bill is meant to prevent situations from reaching that point in the first place, Gregory said.
“It would allow us to have visibility on those facilities prior to them becoming huge, giant puppy mills,” she said.
Law enforcement relies on reports to find problematic breeders. But commercial breeders often sell puppies from secondary locations to keep buyers from seeing where the dogs are kept and reporting them to police. If they operate in rural areas, neighbors may not know what’s happening, either, Gregory said.
South Carolina has seen some big puppy mill busts in the past several years, along with many smaller operations involving local rescues, Gregory said.
For instance, in 2024, the Anderson County animal control office seized 33 dogs and 36 puppies from an illegal breeding operation. And a 2020 operation found nearly 150 dogs at a puppy mill in Laurens County.
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Law enforcement typically hands those dogs over to the nearest animal shelter. With overcrowding a rampant problem, shelters often have to make hard choices about whether to euthanize dogs because they don’t have enough space to house them, said Sen. Jeff Zell, the bill’s co-sponsor.
“The system is so overwhelmed right now,” the Sumter Republican said.
People trying to find homes for dogs from an accidental litter or who ran a small-scale breeding operation wouldn’t need a license under the bill. Needing a license shouldn’t pose an issue for what Gregory called “ethical breeders,” who get all their dogs and puppies thoroughly vetted before breeding and after birth, she said.
Hunting dogs wouldn’t need a license under the bill, out of respect for the state’s culture of using dogs for hunting and other outdoor activities, Zell said.
“There is an extreme level of care that goes for their animals,” Zell said. “But also, I just want to make sure that the provisions that we have also protect those animals from cruelty.”
The dog sport industry is already following all the requirements in the bill, and they don’t want the added level of bureaucracy, said Paul Caskey, president of the South Carolina Sporting Dog Association.
Unlike with secretive puppy mills, the sporting dog community is so tight-knit, someone would report any breeder they believed was breaking existing animal cruelty laws, he said.
“People are going to see them,” Caskey said.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
