I think they key phrase when I first heard about this was that the people are elderly, and even though they were deliberately breeding the dogs to sell puppies, they didn't feel anyone else could give their animals a good home, so they kept them. I think they fell victim to their own paranoia.

I had a friend whose elderly mother lived alone in Los Angeles. She'd call my friend and complain that she had no food, and he needed to bring her some. So he'd buy groceries, and take them to her, only to find the refrigerator was stuffed to the brim with expired, outdated food she'd bought. Turns out the reason she had no food was because she would always buy the largest size packages of everything because it was on sale, but then she had nowhere to store it. So it spoiled. But since there was all this food around, she couldn't just throw it away - that would be wasteful. And she couldn't afford to be wasting anything, because she was on a fixed income, and had to make her money stretch. She always said she'd starve before she got another social security check.

He went around and around with her, until finally she was put into an assisted living home where they could keep an eye on her. Eventually she passed away in her sleep one night. As he was dealing with her financial affairs after the funeral, he discovered she had not one, but SEVERAL bank accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars in them. She could have lived anywhere, under any sort of conditions. But she was convinced it was the Great Depression all over again, and the wolves were at the door. Kind of sad, actually.

I'm glad those dogs in Arizona are mostly all okay. I hope they get great homes.

Dave

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2003 4.4i (The X5 is WAAAY more fun than my Jeep used to be... )