Last
month Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV) raided one of Australia’s largest puppy
farms. The Ballarat puppy farm has been the subject of over twenty raids by ALV
in the last ten years and their investigation team has uncovered appalling
cruelty during each visit. Debra Tranter, ALV’s puppy farm campaigner reports:
"The dogs are filthy. They are kept in dirty pens and never bathed or groomed.
Their fur forms huge matting, which can be quite painful... they are very, very
frightened dogs. They are never brought into a home or put on a lead. In the
middle of winter, it gets below zero and they sleep on a concrete floor with no
bedding.”
The most recent raid received widespread media coverage including a double page
feature in Sydney’s “Sunday Telegraph”. It's important we keep the pressure up
to get puppy farms shut down. Make sure you tell all your friends about the
cruelty behind that 'cute little puppy' in the pet shop window, visit an animal
shelter instead and save a life.
Courtesy of dog-play.com
If you are considering buying a puppy from a pet shop I urge you to first
find out what is involved. The decision is a personal one, and fairly simple. If
you buy a puppy from a pet shop you are supporting and encouraging that pet shop
to continue selling puppies.
Legislation is never as powerful as the consumer. If you won't buy because
you don't agree with the business practices then the business owner has no
choice at all. Change or go out of business. If you buy, even if its because you
feel sorry for the puppy, you are directly responsible for creating the demand
to put more puppies in the same situation. The pet shop owner is not to blame.
You are. You create the demand. You prove by your actions what business
practices you support. Your words mean nothing. Your money is everything to the
business decision. Choose wisely.
The
conversation below is entirely fictitious and unashamedly biased against Pet
Shops who sell animals. I created it, however, not out of thin air, but from
real conversations with real breeders and pet shop owners. It expresses the
decisions made by this fictitious person......a Pet Shop owner who trades in
animals....
"Thank you so much for buying a puppy from my pet shop. Your business is
important to me. After all, selling puppies is how I make my living. Every
person deserves to make a living, don't they? I've got to tell you, the pet shop
business is a tough one. With live merchandise you have all these extra rules
and regulations the do-gooders forced on us. Well they didn't make me do
anything different, except now I've got to fill out a lot more paperwork. But is
worth it. Puppies and kittens are important to my business and there are plenty
of buyers out there.
Some people are trying to make out that pet shops are evil or something. It
gives me a big laugh to see the sanctimonious twits who say bad things about pet
shops but are always coming into my shop to see the "poor puppies." They just
can't seem to stop themselves. And they almost never leave without buying
something. Having puppies in the store is an important part of selling the other
merchandise. I try to put the puppies where people can see them as they walk by
the shop. That draws them in. I can make money without even selling the puppies.
I don't see why selling puppies in my pet shop is any worse than raising any
other kind of livestock. I treat my puppies very well while they are here. And I
use approved methods for disposing of the ones I can't sell. I care about these
puppies and don't want them to suffer, you know.
If I get something really contagious like Parvo I take quick action. All the
puppies in the store are put down right away. Everything is disinfected and a
new supply of puppies brought in. Often I have to fill the empty space with
puppies from another breeder but quick action limits my costs and means I won't
end up on the hook for a lot of vet bills.
As for other kinds of disease like hip dysplasia and such well frankly it
just isn't a big concern. Most of this stuff doesn't show up for a long time.
And the legislation doesn't cover it because it can happen even to the hobby
breeder. Someone once asked me why I didn't check for genetic disease. It was
all I could do not to call the person an idiot! Why should I check for genetic
disease? Its expensive and almost no one ever asks so obviously they don't care.
And anyway I give a six month guarantee. Pretty generous!
Not that I've ever had to pay off or anything. I have had a couple people
complain but I always make sure to carefully explain that the best thing to do
for their poor suffering puppy is to "put it to sleep." Most people will take
the puppy away and not bother me any more about it.
Any one who walks into my store and wants to know about the health of my
puppies I just tell them that they are very healthy! Of course if they want to
know about genetic diseases I have to use a different strategy. First I try to
explain that its always the fault of the owner if a dog gets something like
patellar luxation or hip dysplasia. If they get nasty or something I ask them if
they really want to buy a dog from a hobby breeder? I'm a professional, I make
my living off of dogs. I breed lots and lots of puppies. I sell most of them.
After all its very hard to resist that cute little puppy in the window.
It's very simple. Every time someone buys a puppy I make at least $200, quite
a bit more if they buy the puppy when its little. Yeah, puppies are cute, but
you can't afford to get too sentimental. Puppy selling is a business and if you
don't treat it as such then you can't stay in the game. Its all about
cost/risk/benefit. If you lose sight of that you better get out of the business,
just sell supplies or something.
Despite what everyone says there is a large market out there for pet shop
puppies. There is absolutely no need to waste good money of hip tests and other
such crap. The truth is simple. Even when people know better the puppies are so
cute that they just can't help themselves so they buy them. Heee hee Pretty
cool. It doesn't look good to have lots of empty cages so I make sure I always
have puppies on the way. Sometimes I get a bit of a scare, though. Like last
year.
There was a lot of bad press about pet stores and all of a sudden no one was
buying. Well of course if I'm not selling the ones in the store its pretty
stupid to be getting more in from the puppy farms, so I told my staff to hold
back a bit. I was afraid for a short time that I was going to actually have to
stop buying them in forever, and that really scared the puppy farmers too. Some
even stopped breeding for a while. No point in breeding if you aren't selling.
Fortunately as the puppies that we had for sale got older some of those
do-gooder types looking in the window every day started to get worried. I made
sure my staff played off on this. They were told that if anyone asked what
happened to the unsold puppies that they should just look real sad and say that
they were "taken care of." I liked that. A real non-committal answer and the
absolute truth too!
I told the staff not to use a larger cage too, that would make the puppies look
bigger and sadder. So of course the puppies were "rescued" from my shop. I got
enough money to cover the costs of keeping them, a small profit, and the scare
was over. Back to buying and breeding. As long as there are buyers like me, the
puppy farms will keep breeding puppies and I can keep selling them in my shop.
Lots of money to be made, so no reason not to..."
("Where Do Pet Store Puppies Come From?" written by
www.helpinganimals.com in the USA.
Sadly the situation is not that different in Australia.)
Most puppies sold in stores come from breeding "farms" called "puppy mills,"
where mother dogs and "studs" spend lonely lives in small filthy cages,
producing litter after litter.
Recently, PETA found dogs at one puppy mill living on hard wire with no bedding,
little protection from the searing hot summers or the frigid winters, and little
to no veterinary care. Crusted, oozing eyes, raging ear infections, mange that
turned skin into a mass of red scabs, abscessed feet from the unforgiving wire
floors—all were ignored or inadequately treated. Some dogs injured their feet by
catching them in the wire of their cages, and they hobbled painfully around
their small space, trying to keep their balance. The collar on one Labrador
retriever had not been adjusted as the dog grew and had become embedded in his
flesh. Even though the gangrenous skin fell away as the collar was removed, his
neck was treated with nothing but a worm-repellant spray.
Timid dogs were terrorized by their more aggressive cagemates, who often
prevented them from eating and drinking. Sadly, many of the old mother dogs had
gone mad from confinement and loneliness. They circled frantically in their
small cages and paced ceaselessly back and forth—their only way of coping with
their despair.
These conditions are typical at hundreds of puppy mills across the country. Laws
offer little protection and are poorly enforced by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
Serious Health Problems
Unhealthy conditions, lack of veterinary care, and careless breeding lead to
serious problems. By the time puppy-mill puppies are shipped to pet stores, many
suffer from ear infections, bronchial illness, and serious congenital health
conditions, such as hip deformities, epilepsy, and vision or hearing problems.
People paying hundreds of dollars for puppies often find that they must spend
thousands more for veterinary care.
Overpopulation Crisis
While puppy mills are churning out litters, millions of unwanted dogs are
dying in pounds and shelters. If everyone who wanted a companion dog were to
adopt from a shelter instead of buying from a pet store, tens of thousands of
dogs would be spared and the puppy mills would go out of business—preventing
thousands more breeding dogs from enduring lonely, miserable lives.
Where Should I Get a Dog?
If you have the time, resources, and love necessary to care for a dog
properly, adopt one from a shelter or pound. If you must have a particular
breed, you may be surprised to find that 25 percent of shelter dogs are
purebred.
You CAN improve the lives of dogs and cats suffering from cruelty and
neglect.
Back to top
