More than 100 dog owners crowded a meeting to speak up for their four-legged friends. Last year near Thorp, a breeder held Wisconsin’s first dog auction. Since then, there have been two more there, including one on Saturday (June 2). Now dog lovers say they need to stop.

Meet Boogie, a beagle pug mix who's had a rough start to life. Rescuers bought him this spring near Milwaukee; they say his mother was so stressed by horrible living conditions that she chewed off her own puppy's foot.

“There's usually 5 or 6 in a cage. They almost have to lay on top of each other to be in there,” says Kati Gruber, with the Dunn Co. Humane Society.

The state has no laws preventing dog auctions and concerned dog lovers say the animals sold at those auctions need help. People appealed to state legislators Pat Kreitlow and Jeff Smith to get a law on the books.

“I really do think that we need the state inspectors. I think it's ridiculous,” Jean Secraw says.

Secraw has been breeding dogs in Colfax for 25 years- she's U.S.D.A. licensed and her dogs get heating and air conditioning, luxuries auction dogs don't have.

“I just, I cringed and I just felt sick looking at these poor animals, not knowing what was happening to them,” Gruber says.

The Wisconsin Puppy Mill Project hosted the meeting. Executive Director Eilene Ribbens Rhode says some of the dog's she's seen at the auctions are covered in feces and have limbs chewed off. Many of the dogs will never fully recover.

“The damage is pretty much most of the time irreversible. You can improve on it considerably and end up with a dog that's great, but not what most people would expect,” Gruber says.

Leon Horst runs the dog auctions near Thorp. He says he's planning another auction for September.