Blaring music drowned out the barking, but there was no masking the neglect inside the sweltering Riverside County garage.
Jamie Abruzzo, a Missouri middle school teacher who picked up a summer job trucking puppies around the country, was overcome by anger as he took in the filth and feces that surrounded him.
Outside, the temperature neared triple digits. Inside, where the air conditioner wasn’t working, dozens of puppies and kittens were jammed into small cages and storage bins lined with soiled shredded paper. Water containers nearby were empty.
Abruzzo cradled his delivery, a 10-week-old Boston terrier that had made its way from an Indiana breeder to a broker, then to a crate inside his transport van. After two days on the road, this was the puppy’s next stop — the detached garage turned holding pen in an Inland Empire suburb.
The driver knew where this multi-state pipeline was supposed to lead for the animals left unattended that day: loving homes. But what Abruzzo stumbled into was the underbelly of California’s lucrative, unregulated puppy market.