Below is a fun, heartwarming video of a bunch of puppies playing on the lawn, barking and yipping and having fun. There’s more than 1 million on the Internet much like it, but the story behind this one makes it more poignant than your usual cute dog videos.
The puppies shown below are from an operation that rescued 75 dogs from puppy mills in Kansas and Missouri. Thirty of the small dogs were brought to the Arizona Animal Welfare League & SPCA by National Mill Dog Rescue, which sponsored the operation. This is the video of those dogs getting to walk and play on the ground for the first time.
It seems strange, even if you’re familiar with the realities of puppy farms, to think of walking on bare soil and grass as being a first. Even when I was living in Brooklyn, my neighbors’ dogs, surrounded by tiny apartments and concrete sidewalks, got out occasionally to Fort Greene Park or Prospect Park to play. If a dog can get that in Brooklyn, it seems like it should be possible to do it anywhere.
But unfortunately not. That’s what puppy mills are all about. Usually, we see the point made by pictures of dogs in misery, crammed into close quarters with dirty straw and filthy food. But the unfettered joy of the dogs in the video below makes the same point in a less gruesome fashion, allowing us to see what those dogs were missing and just how relieved they are when they finally get it. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking, all at once.
If you want to get a closer look at the dogs that NMDR rescued in the recent operation, there’s a whole gallery on the group’s Facebook page. The puppies are all adorable — and looking for homes.
Via Life With Dogs
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