Peace for Clemmie on a blind horizon
What must it be like to lie unseen and unseeing on a hard and dirty floor? Not for a night or two, but for years. Your ears filling with constant noise. The sounds coming from your fellow creatures doing their best to survive the wretched conditions in which you’re all trapped. This is how Clemmie existed until a few weeks ago.
Clemmie is a dog whose sole existence hinged on her ability to produce puppies. Did she ever breathe air that didn’t reek of filth and waste? Unlikely. Access to a tiny outside space may have been available but it’s doubtful Clemmie ever had more than the briefest breath of outside air.
Read more on conditions for dogs in puppy farms here.
Now she lays in the garden, gentle spring sunshine warming her bald back, her black, dry skin exposed, a sign of hormone disruption from years of breeding. Or, she’ll tuck herself deep into a cushioned bed beside her new sisters in the lounge. For Clemmie has a home, a family, a full life ahead of her as the puppy farmer got rid in the latest ‘stock clear out’.
Clemmie is blind. If the puppy farmer had cared to look at her, they’d have known. And they wouldn’t have worried, or done anything, but they would have known. Her clouded, white eyes like soft opals gaze blindly in her new surroundings. She copes, displaying the courage which has got her to this point in her life. The weak don’t survive in the breeding industry. Clemmie’s strength is a blessing and a curse – cursed years of breeding for the puppy business because she was strong enough to survive.
The infernal cruelty of this ugly, expanding, selfish industry runs through it like blood.
Clemmie and her adopter are supporting Schnauzerfest in its efforts to educate, campaign and make a difference to dogs in the puppy industry.
Read more here.
