There’s never been this much firepower focused on the problem of puppy mills. This week, The HSUS’s Emergency Services team had four deployments—puppy mill raids in North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Dakota—where we partnered with local organizations and law enforcement to rescue dogs in distress, the victims of greed and neglect.

Photo credit Turner/The HSUS

Our staff are pulling animals out of harm’s way, at a pace the humane movement has never seen before, delivering sick and hungry dogs to our emergency animal shelters, providing proper veterinary care to them for the first time in their lives, and then working with local humane organizations to adopt them out to loving families. I can only imagine the happiness and security that these animals feel in their new homes, compared to the isolation and endless breeding and squalor they lived in previously on the mills.

But we don’t want to have to resort to rescue and deliver these animals from such painful situations. We want to work on the front end and prevent animals from getting into these dire straits to begin with. That’s why we’ve been so committed to passing legislation to crack down on puppy mills. I announced earlier in the year that we’ve gained major legislative wins this year on puppy mill legislation in Indiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington. And just yesterday, we worked to shepherd a bill to passage—with the leadership of Assemblyman Pedro Nava and Sen. Dean Florez—in California to crack down on puppy mills. It is very similar in content to the bills we worked to pass in Oregon and Washington earlier this year. Once Gov. Schwarzenegger signs the legislation, the Pacific Coast states will be a much safer place for dogs. Now, we’ll move even more decisively into the heartland.

It’s through focused, determined, and expert action that we are achieving these gains. We rely on you to support these efforts in so many ways, and hope you’ll dig deep to keep our puppy mill campaign operating at full capacity.