People should know better than purchasing from these people. This nonsense doe not happen with honest to goodness sincere breeders. They are always available to refer back to, there is a health guarantee, they'll work with you, and they don't stuff puppies in suitcases and smuggle them across the border.  Any breeder worth his salt is concerned about the long term welfare of their puppy and not like it is cargo to be delivered and forgotten about. This is what makes me furious about people who just say "all breeders are the problem". If I'm preaching to the choir sorry about that, but I would like to see this kind of stuff below stopped for good.

 I got two more similar news articles today. Makes  you sick. Wonder how these puppies feel being treated this way?

 

 

Puppy peddlers join cross-border smuggling business

07:45 AM Mountain Standard Time on Friday, May 5, 2006

Puppy peddlers join cross-border smuggling business

They're cute, cuddly and at the center of a cross-border smuggling business.

We're finding them stuffed into speaker boxes, taped underneath the seats, hidden away in duffle bags and shoved underneath other belongings," said Dan DeSousa of the Animal Services Department.

Twenty-eight puppies were recently discovered in a vehicle stopped at a border crossing near San Diego.

The border is the only thing standing between puppy peddlers and big profits.

Every dog smuggled across from Mexico in a car or truck is worth hundreds of dollars more on the United States' side of the border.

"So, in Mexico $50. In the United States, $500, $600 to $1,000," DeSousa said.

But often there's a hidden cost for unsuspecting families who buy the dogs.

The heartbreak is more significant," Jim Gagne said.

Gagne and his wife bought a Maltese puppy that was advertised in the newspaper.

"We'd been going through some difficult times, health problems (for) myself and my wife," Gagne said. "We thought having another dog would bring us some joy."

They paid $450.

"We had the puppy at home a day," Gagne said. "Died in two and a half days."

That's after spending nearly $2,000 at the veterinarian trying to save her.

The puppies often have diseases. Many don't survive because they're too young to be taken from their mothers.

When another owner tried to contact the man who sold him a sick puppy, he wasn't able to.

"We found out his cell phone was a disposable cell phone," said the pet owner. "It's heart-wrenching."

The San Diego Department of Animal Services sees it all the time.

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"We're lucky if we see 50 percent survive and that's with intensive vet care," said Simran Zilaro of the San Diego Humane Society.

The agency is part of the Border Puppy Task Force created in California to cope with the growing problem.

"If you haven't seen it in other places, it's probably going on. You just haven't detected it yet," Zilaro said.

A group of kids selling puppies in a Mexican border town near San Diego expected to sell all their puppies that day to Americans who then smuggle the dogs across.

The same thing happens on street corners, swap meets and store parking lots on the United States' side of the border.

"Puppy peddling is better than selling drugs," Zilaro said. "The consequences are far less."

Some puppies rescued at the border are now 2 months old.

"For them to make it this far is really very miraculous," Zilaro said.

Once they were nursed back to health, the dogs were quickly adopted. And that's the dilemma.

"You bond instantly with these animals," Zilaro said. "You look at them and you fall in love."

Investigators say the problem extends well beyond the border.

Some of the puppies are being sold online and shipped to cities across the United States