Who are you Really Helping when you Buy from a Pet Store

Animal lovers often mistakenly think that when they buy an animal from a pet store they are saving its life. Nothing could be further from the truth. Buying live animals from a pet store actually supports a massive cruel industry of breeding pets purely for profit.

No reputable breeder would sell to a pet store, they would sell directly to the public. They have no need to hide anonymously and let the store sell their animals, rather they would want to stand proud behind what they have produced. No reputable breeder would even consider breeding until they had prospective buyers lined up in advance. Pet stores are stores, their goal is profit. To make money they have to buy cheap, and sell high.

What quality of breeding, and quality of care goes into an animal bred so cheaply that it can be resold by the pet store at a huge profit? Keep in mind some pet stores inflate their live animal prices by 400% to offset death and disease.

Pet stores deny buying from puppy mills (and other unethical mass breeders), indeed they often buy from brokers, a middle-man, who also makes money, again reflecting the lack of expenses that went into producing any pet store animal in question. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nachof/2784246448/

In March 2009, a Connecticut pet store found a bunny with 2 noses in their shipment of pets. Clearly this bunny had never been handled prior to the date it was brought to the store, because otherwise the deformity would have been noticed earlier. To make matters worse the deformity was probably the result of inbreeding or exposure of the mother to toxins. Either one being a sign of a terribly unethical breeder.

All pets sold to pet stores come from places that do not put a high importance on breed standards, or care for the animals. They are “pet” quality (not breeding or show quality) animals sold at the highest possible price to unsuspecting buyers. Keep in mind that reputable breeders take their animals to shows to prove their worth as breeding animals. They also take their dogs to veterinarians for extensive testing against genetic problems, such as faults in their hips, eyes, and ears. Both are things that cost a lot, and are things pet store breeders would never invest a cent on. Even registration does not mean a pet is good quality.

Even now people are in the dark about puppy mills, and no pet store would admit using them. Yet they exist and supply stores constantly. They house dogs in small cages, often stacked on top of each other to conserve space. Dogs are put together for the purpose of mating, they are not handled otherwise, not even allowed out for running around. Make no mistake the cages are only a few square feet of wire. They have their pups and are rebred as quickly as possible, and are disposed of when they can no longer reproduce.

Similar facilities exist for the breeding of all other animals in pet stores. Make no mistake, when a pet is purchased from a pet store the buyer is rewarding unscrupulous practices and encouraging cruelty to continue in this way.

If you are concerned about what happens to the pets that stores do not sell, click here.

Never mind the fact that their staff are sometimes less educated on care, or that the pets are sometimes sold to people who are not fully prepared to be good owners. Never mind the fact that animals in pet stores live in small, often crowded cages, with an annoying pattern of visitors, often in loud environments. The true crime lies in the fact that people go to pet stores thinking they are dealing with people who love pets. In fact they are dealing with stores, and stores love one thing; profit.