Another puppy seller down the drain, I hope.....

Hopefully, this will be permanent.....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2011/06/16/ns-pets-unlimited.html

yay!!!!!

There was an article about the city of Glendale, CA considering a ban on all retail puppy sales. One less...one less...

A puppy sale ban was to be discussed at Toronto City Council on the 31st of May. Not as radical as I'd hoped, but a start.....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/05/31/toronto-pet-stores.html

Slowly but surely the tide is turning.

This is so awesome! We have one of the Pets Unlimited in this was being discussed over the weekend during the SPCA fundraiser that I went to. Everyone is quite excited!! I think they were losing a lot of other business too because a PetSmart recently opened and they do the adoption program through SPCA and people want to give them business, not PetsUnlimited.

PJ's Pets is the big puppy seller here and they have just announced that come Sept. 1st, no more puppies for sale.

I understand that you feel like you are rescuing when you take a puppy from a pet store--what people don't see is the back side of that effort. When a puppy leaves the pet store, the bitches and sires in the cages in the barns of the supplier are condemned to yet another litter as there is now room for more puppies. Bottom line, for the supplier and the pet store, it's about moving product and regardless of the motives of the buyer, you've just helped them move product so that more can be brought in.

This is my Hazel--she was a puppy mill breeder for many many years. She's happy as a clam now, but was in terrible shape when she came into rescue. Her poor teats dragged in the snow, she was so stretched out and she has permanent "star fish" feet from years of standing on a wire bottomed cage. We ended up not microchipping her as she has numerous ones from the various millers to whom she was sold back and forth. It's hard to walk away from the pet store puppies, but I just remember the years Hazel suffered producing those puppies. Makes it easier for me to never purchase anything from the puppy sellers.

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Jessica.Waldher wrote:It is hard to walk away from puppies at pet stores and for that reason alone I have not been in one since I got Fiona. If I want to play with or see dogs and puppies I go to the local pound, I also tell other ppl to do the same, which is how I found Abby. When I got Fiona I didn’t know about puppy mills and back yard breeders. I have done a lot of reading and been on a few forums also animal cops on Animal Planet was an eye openers.

I didn't know any better either with my first pug, Hooligan. I've found the same thing as you, it's just much easier to not even step foot in one. Luckily the anti petstore trend is growing (at least, I hope)!

Saira wrote:

Jessica.Waldher wrote:It is hard to walk away from puppies at pet stores and for that reason alone I have not been in one since I got Fiona. If I want to play with or see dogs and puppies I go to the local pound, I also tell other ppl to do the same, which is how I found Abby. When I got Fiona I didn’t know about puppy mills and back yard breeders. I have done a lot of reading and been on a few forums also animal cops on Animal Planet was an eye openers.

I didn't know any better either with my first pug, Hooligan. I've found the same thing as you, it's just much easier to not even step foot in one. Luckily the anti petstore trend is growing (at least, I hope)!

I did the same thing and let my husband order Ichiro directly from a puppy mill in Alabama.

I am forever grateful to have my beloved Ichiro, but just beside myself that I contributed to the problem and did not know it. Of course, I suppose I got my karma back. Ichiro came with a host of medical problems and continues to be my neediest pug.

Saira wrote:

Jessica.Waldher wrote:It is hard to walk away from puppies at pet stores and for that reason alone I have not been in one since I got Fiona. If I want to play with or see dogs and puppies I go to the local pound, I also tell other ppl to do the same, which is how I found Abby. When I got Fiona I didn’t know about puppy mills and back yard breeders. I have done a lot of reading and been on a few forums also animal cops on Animal Planet was an eye openers.

I didn't know any better either with my first pug, Hooligan. I've found the same thing as you, it's just much easier to not even step foot in one. Luckily the anti petstore trend is growing (at least, I hope)!

Hey, when you know better, you do better--that's the important thing. EVERYONE started from some level of ignorance and learned as they went along. The important thing, again, is that people learn.

I haven't walked into a pet store that sells live animals in years. As hard as it is to want to go in and rescue every Pug out of the store, I will not give those puppy retailers any of my hard earned money so they can go on perpetuating the evil cycle of purchasing dogs from puppy mills.



I think of my Chrissy Belle, she came to us at 8 years old, after spending a life of producing litter after litter in a wire cage. When she could no longer produce, she was taken to be put down. That's where rescue stepped in and took her. She had no name, just a number tattooed on the inside of her year, that's all she had been all her life, just a number. Her spine had degenerated beyond repair, and she suffered from mammary tumors, but she had the spirit and fight of a 100 Pugs combined. From the moment I saw her at a rescue event, I couldn't take my eyes off her, no one gave her a second look because she was old and could barely walk, but that girl still had a lot of love left to give. With her unsteady gait, and bunny hopping over obstacles, and her hips swaying from side to side with every step, she won my heart over. Chrissy Belle lived happily and content with us until the age of 15 when finally all those previous years of neglect caught up with her. It was very hard to let her go, because she had such a fighting spirit all the way to the end, but her little body just quit on her. There is no doubt in my mind, she could have lived to be 18 or 19 if she had been more than just a number in her early days.

Jessica.Waldher wrote:
I got my Puggle puppy from a puppy store and in a way I felt like I was rescuing her. All the dogs in the store were sad looking and marked way down because they were “old”. Once I got her home I noticed she has a scar on her rib cage and a couple on her paws. I took her to the vet and thankfully she was in good health but no explanation of how she could have gotten those scars. A month after I got Fiona the store went out of business.

Our youngest dog, Leo, was purchased from Russo's at the Irvine Spectrum. He was already six months old and marked way down. They told the woman who purchased him that it was "his last day for sale." So she bought him, spent close to $1,000 in vet bills for the next month, and then gave him up to us because he had too many problems. When she went back to the store to let them know about all his health problems, they said they'd refund her money and take him back, but they wouldn't tell her what would happen to him if she returned him.

His physical problems aside, he also came to us a little crazy in the head (he still is a bit and he's almost 7 now). Granted, that may be just the way he is, but I'm sure that being confined in a small cage for the first 6 months of his life didn't help his mental health and contributed to his behavioral problems.

I hate pet stores. But I get what you mean. My husband feels the same way and his soft heart is always telling him to rescue a dog from a pet store. But it's supply and demand. For every sad, miserable dog you rescue from a pet store, you motivate them to fill up that empty cage with another sad, miserable pup.

Aussie Witch wrote:Slowly but surely the tide is turning.

One can only hope.

Blanche, it's a shame Hazel can't be used as a poster child for educating people about pet store puppies.

Unfortunately, the general public is pretty much unaware of the whole puppy mill issue. We live not far from Lancaster Pa. where many Ahmish farmers raise puppies as livestock for sale or to supply pet stores. There are advertisements in our local newspaper offering over 10 different breeds from one location. How convenient, huh? A lot of folks just don't get it. In this day of instant gratification they just don't want to think about it any deeper than "Wow, we can check out a lot of different kinds of puppies in one stop". I constantly piss people off telling them about pet stores puppies, puppy mills and dogs being euthanized due to oversupply when they tell or ask me about breeding. Most of the still don't get it. This issue has to be pounded nto the consciousness of the public.Writing letters to the editors in your newspapers or any forum you can access needs to be taken advantage of to get and keep people aware of this. I know I'm preaching to the choir here so I'll get off my soap box.