If a hobby-breeder is making money off of their hobby, it has become a business. If a hobby-breeder is only charging for the care and up-keep of the puppy until the new owner picks it up, it is a non-profit business, but still a business. As soon as you charge someone money for a "product", you have to accept some of the responsibilities of a small business owner. The puppy is only in your home for a few weeks, but it is in the buyer's home for a doggy lifetime. That puppy's personality will affect the daily life of the buyer and seeing what sort of true environment that personality has been formed in is very important. If you don't want to open your house to the public, don't run a business out of your house. Many breeders ask the buyer detailed questions to make sure that puppy is going to a good home. Give the public a chance to put the breeder under the same scrutiny. Suzie is presenting the case of someone who treats their dogs well and just wants to sit down to a family meal without some stranger showing up at the door, but if that breeder has nothing to hide and is advertising dogs for sale, they should expect that for the amount of time that puppies are available. If they are just a hobby breeder, they most likely won't have litters available 24-7, year round. Part of the cost of doing business may be having your house ready for an "open house" just until those tiny puppies are all spoken for and then you can go back to privacy as usual. It seems like a small price to pay to show people that your dogs are actually a better buy than getting puppies from a secretive breeder with something to hide or a petshop. Also, USDA standards do not include painless treatment of animals. We know that dogs feel pain, and it doesn't seem moral to me to raise dogs in a life of pain. I think our government is a long way from including painless practices into the treatment of agriculture so we have to govern ourselves and do the right thing without someone telling us to. Causing pain to another living creature for profit is not the right thing.