We’ve all been there—a pair of big, brown eyes looks at you from behind the glass as a slobbery tongue hangs out of a mouth smiling with “take me home” anticipation. And while resistance to such overpowering cuteness may seem futile, refusing to buy your puppy from a pet store will benefit you, and potentially save the lives of thousands of neglected and mistreated dogs across the country.

Thanks to the postwar boom of the late 1940s, Americans were left with more leisure time and increased disposable income. Uninformed farmers began breeding puppies with hopes to sell them to pet-store outlets and giant chains like Sears Roebuck. The result was a nationwide presence of puppy mills—facilities that specialize in the mass breeding of dogs, despite deplorable conditions.

Unfortunately, according to the Humane Society, there may be as many as 10,000 puppy mills operating across the United States some 60 years later.

The real problem with puppy mills, though, is not their reprehensible reputation; it’s the fact that they’re perfectly legal in most states.

In 1966, Congress passed the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) as a result of the public outcry against shady dealings involving stolen dogs being sold to laboratories for research. The AWA, in its original form, was strictly limited to these animal-research cases, which left a gaping hole in the oversight of wholesale kennels, which shipped puppies in vegetable crates by the truckload to pet stores. In 1970, the AWA was amended in an attempt to police and regulate anyone wholesaling puppies (i.e., breeders who don’t sell directly to the consumer) with mandatory United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspections.

But just as having a valid driver’s license doesn’t make someone a safe driver, being USDA-inspected doesn’t mean a business isn’t a puppy mill. According to stoppuppymills.org, it is extremely rare for the USDA to revoke a commercial breeder’s license or even impose a fine on a puppy mill with a long list of violations. The only way to truly affect the presence of puppy mills in the United States is by boycotting pet stores on your search for a canine companion.

Puppy mills maximize their profits by not spending adequate money on proper food, housing, or medical care for the dogs they house. Some dogs are also so psychologically scarred from their imprisonment—in deplorable conditions—that they develop repetitive behaviors like walking around in circles and barking at walls for hours.

If chilling facts like these aren’t enough to deter you from a pet-store pup, consider this: 4 to 5 million animals die in shelters each year. That’s 11,000 every day. Giving one of them a chance means denying an irresponsible breeder the opportunity to profit from animal suffering.