Heartbreaking Photos Show Popular Pet Store's Suffering Animals

Usually when people complain about their jobs on Facebook, they don't get interviewed about it for the 11 o'clock news.

Katelyn Cerciello, a young woman from Pennsylvania, took to Facebook with pictures and accusations against her former employer, the Petland pet store, which she says denied animals basic medical treatment.

"[I] couldn't watch the owner refuse vet care for sick puppies anymore, [or] ship them back to the Hunte Corporation to be euthanized," said Cerciello to WPXI of Pittsburgh.

"You could tell they were sick. Nine-week-old puppies should be bouncing around playing, but they'd be lying on the floor."A former Petland employee is speaking out about the mistreatment of animals she says she witnessed at the Robinson Township pet shop -- http://on.wpxi.com/1IghocSTonight on Channel 11 News at 11, WPXI Pamela Osborne speaks one-on-one with the woman behind the social media post that has gone viral and is taking her allegations straight to the store's leaders.

The Hunte Corporation is one of an estimated 15,000 puppy mills in the United States. Nearly all puppies in pet stores, newspaper ads and direct-to-consumer, online puppy shopping sites come from these types of mass-production factories, where the health and well-being of the dogs are often a lower priority than profit.

Cerciello has documented her own experiences at Petland on her blog and her Facebook page.

July 10: We received a shipment of puppies this past Tuesday. It was known that there was supposed to be 13 puppies...

On Tuesday afternoon, a current Petland worker told The Dodo that Cerciello's statements were all untrue and hurtful to everybody at the pet store. Petland workers may dispute the allegations, but they can't dispute the harsh facts about puppy mills and puppy-selling pet stores' dependence on them.

You can find more Dodo information about puppy mills here.