Puppy mills: Missouri legislature deaf to "will of the people"

For the second time since my husband retired to our military "home of record," the Missouri legislature is working to overturn a voter initiated proposition.  This time, the legislators want to reduce regulation of "puppy mills."

Voters as nuisances: Missouri lawmakers thumb their noses at direct democracy, 27 January 2011, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

What happened to the great conservative tantrum about the best government governing least?

One of our daughters is a veterinarian at a shelter and among her duties is the need to evaluate animals seized from some of these torture mills by workers from the Department of Agriculture. By "evaluate" I mean that she looks into their blinded eyes, smells their stink, touches the raw ends of exposed nerves and sees the dogs recoil, peers into festering mouths. Dogs come in with their blackened teeth rotted so far into the gum that the dog's jawbone crackles and breaks.  Some have ulcers on their eyeballs so that they are blind.  Some are missing feet.  Howsabout skin and muscle rotted to the bone?  Starvation? Some of the animals have skin that is burned from laying in their own shit and piss. 

Calling what some dogs lay in "feces and urine" papers over the putrefaction, removes the reek, sanitizes the stench of the inhumane treatment these chained and caged creatures cannot escape.  Nothing spares the dogs from months of maggots munching away at their very bodies, so where is the dignity in protecting our tender feelings from the words?  (I've spared you direct views of the pictures.)  Readers who have made it this far can click and close the window and the horror show is over, but for some of the animals, the only escape is the oblivion after the process of death by minutes that turn into hours, and days and weeks, months or god help them, years.

And as for allowing up to 180 days for a breeder to correct "serious" violations, imagine waiting six months for relief while marinating in your own filth -- without knowing that there was relief, without knowing about paperwork, without knowing that there was any end.

If the legislature won't work to protect these creatures over which some people claim dominion, then the voters must try -- even if it just means insisting upon enforcement of laws already on the books.