Ailea's Place - Rescue - Pet Shop Puppies

Pet Shop Puppy

I'm a little puppy, so cuddly, sweet and small
I live inside a cage, you see, at Pet Shop in the mall.
I'm not an only puppy, my sisters are all here.
My brothers, too, except for Ralph, who died coz he was scared.

It's lonely here at nighttime when all the lights go dark,
We tremble in our cages and we whimper and we bark.
But no one comes to hold us or pet our fears away
We sit all night in terror til the store opens next day.

We don't remember Mama, left so far behind
She did the best she could for us til Man said "It is time."
He crammed us all in cages too small for us you see
We rode for hours; we could not help but lay in poop and pee.

And now we sit in Pet Shop where kids come taunt and squeeze
They do not hear our whimpers or understand our pleas
We're miserable and it's scary here we all would rather die
But since we don't we do our best to run away and hide.

I know you think my story too sad to leave me be
You want to take me home with you, a happy little puppy.
But please, though it is fearful to live here against our will
If you take me that leaves a spot another pup will fill.

You can stop our suffering but not by taking us home.
You must be strong and leave us here, unsold and all alone.
For if you do not take me, then another pup won't come
And maybe he will not be shipped so far away from home.

Though some of us may not survive the cycle 'ere it falls,
If we don't sell they will not need more puppies in these halls.
And if they need no puppies then the Man will not bring more...
Eventually it can all stop! You CAN close the door!

So when you see a puppy face so sad and sweet and small
In a cage at Pet Shop in your neighborhood shopping mall,
The best thing you can do for him is leave him sitting there;
That is the best way you can tell ALL dogs how much you care.

-- by Amy Butcher, Ailea Shelties, 7/20/98 --
Written in protest of the sale of live puppies
and kittens in pet shops nationwide.

(Permission to cross-post freely given,
with link-back to this page.
Contact Amy for poem file and permission)

This is one of my most passionate topics, I guess you could say: The plight of pet store puppies.

We have all seen them - wide-eyed and waggy-tailed, staring out at us from behind a glass partition, or from within the many cages in the pet store. Little, wriggly bodies with happy licks to your hands or face. All of them seeming to say, "Please, take me home! Please! Please! PLEASE!"

Not so very long ago I believed, because I had no information otherwise, that the only place to buy a purebred dog was in a pet store. I think this is a very popular and widely-held belief, too. This could not be further from the truth.

Not so very long ago I also believed, because I had no information otherwise, that purebred dogs were high-strung, nervous and timid, animals prone to being sick, genetically defective, destined to a short life, all because of being inbred or linebred or by the pure and simple fact they WERE purebred! This, too, could not be further from the truth. At least not for dogs properly bred and raised. Because my interest is shelties I apply these thoughts to shelties only, but you are encouraged to apply the same thoughts and ideas to the breed of your choice, from the bull mastiff down to the Yorkshire terrier.

And let us not forget the sales clerk! The sales clerk will offer you information about your puppy, how easy it is, how healthy he or she is, what sort of things you might expect, none of it bad, none of it to discourage you from the purchase. Everything the sales clerk offers you is geared toward the clerk making the sale, is geared toward you taking that puppy home with you. They will even tell you the puppies are raised by loving homes. This, too, could not be further from the truth.

If a loving home really did raise that puppy, that selfsame loving home would want to know where that puppy finally finds a home... The loving home would want to know how the puppy gets along, how the puppy grows, how the puppy's health is, throughout the life of the dog. Do you think the sales clerk or owner of the pet store cares about where these puppies go? No, they don't. They only care about the dollar the puppy brings in.

And what the sales clerk WON'T tell you is the truth about where the puppies come from. Most of you don't want to know where those puppies in the pet store come from. You would be sickened to know how that little life came to be in the pet store window.

Most of the puppies you find in a pet store are raised in what are known as puppy mills. Living conditions in puppy mills are most often deplorable. If you visited a puppy mill (choose any of them from the hundreds in existence) you would probably find multiple dogs crammed into a cage intended to house one dog only. Often, to save space, these cages are stacked atop each other, and the top dog eliminates body waste through the top cage, down to the next cage, down to the next cage, until it finally reaches the bottom. Whatever must the dogs in the bottom cages be living in, with waste from multiple dogs falling upon them all the time? The miniscule percentage of remaining puppies found in pet stores most likely come from what we call "back yard breeders" - Joe and Jane Doe who breed Fluffy and Fido to make puppies to make money, based only on the fact Fluffy and Fido are registered animals of whatever given breed. In BOTH instances, health, genetics and lineage of the dogs do not matter to the people who own and breed them. And Joe and Jane Doe breeding Fluffy and Fido are most times simply un- or ill-educated about what they are breeding.

Dogs in puppy mills are not clean (how could they be?). Nor could they be very healthy, living under the conditions they do. Breeding stock are bred as soon as possible, and as many times as the bitches come in season. It is not uncommon to find a puppy mill bitch aged 6 years, and having produced as many as 10 or 12 litters of puppies already! And when breeding stock stops producing puppies (and they all do), they are killed on the spot. Or abandoned. Or surrendered to the shelter to be euthanized, which is just a nice word for killed.

When puppies are quite young (sometimes as young as 4 to 5 weeks) they are packed up into crates and shipped off, usually via a middle-man broker who buys the puppies from the mill in bulk numbers for a set price. The broker in turn sells these little lives to his "customers" - your local mom & pop pet store. What the pet store gets is a puppy whose health and temperament are unknown and highly suspect. Many times the actual pedigree of the puppy is unknown too, as multiple studs may be left with a bitch to ensure pregnancy. But the brokers and the puppy millers are not concerned with parentage, lineage, health or temperament. They are concerned with the money the dogs make them.

So you walk into a pet store and you buy a puppy and take it home. After a couple of weeks you realize your puppy is hopelessly hyper, or a fear biter, or worse, the puppy sickens and dies from a wholly preventable disease, simply because the health of the puppy was not properly looked after. Do you have someone to turn to? The pet store has already received payment from your credit card, or your check has cleared the bank. Do you think they care a whole lot about whether your puppy survived, or is the puppy you had hoped it would be? You may encounter a sympathetic ear with the store clerk, who may mumble some meaningless words of apology, but will you receive compensation or refund of your sizeable investment in the purchase of this puppy that has now become sick, unacceptable, or died? Not very likely.

What do you think happens when the pet store closes for the day and the lights go out? Puppies are left, caged, for as many as 14 hours at a time with no one to see them, pet them, love them, hold them, or take them potty. They are forced to urinate and defecate in their cages, because there is no one there to see to their needs. Can you imagine being a SIX WEEK OLD PUPPY in a pet store when the lights go out at 6:00 p.m., when it is 8:00 a.m. the next day before the lights come on once more? What do you think happens when the store closes for the day on Saturday, and does not re-open until Monday morning? I have had MANY pet store workers respond to some strong words I have said in the past about pet stores - they all make the same claim: THEIR pet store is different... THEY love their puppies... THEY keep them clean... THEIR puppies are seen by the vet... THEY love their puppies... But the workers in a pet store have a job to do. Their job is not to play with puppies, but to sell merchandise. Puppies are just one part of the merchandise offered for sale. Part of someone's job at the pet store is to clean cages, feed and water the animals, but when you consider a 24-hour day and about 10 minutes each cage to clean, water and feed, that is not a whole lot of time devoted, is it?

Though I used to believe purebred dogs were health problems, I now know it is not purebred dogs, but dogs that are bred indiscriminately - without thought to those things that make a dog the great pet - and friend - he is - that have all the health problems, both physically and emotionally. It is the puppy mill and back-yard bred dogs who are more often unhealthy, who regularly sicken and die, who are most apt to be or become fear biters, or timid, or high strung, or that bark all the time.

It is the pet store puppies and the back-yard bred puppies who give purebred dogs bad names. I have too many times seen closely bred pedigrees produce excellent Shelties with high intelligence, sound temperaments and good health to think or believe otherwise. Purebred dogs are not the problem, indiscriminate breeding is the problem (and lack of education is at the core of all the problems...).

And every time someone buys a pet store puppy, they make room (and give good reason) for another pet store puppy to take its place. More business for the broker, more business for the puppy mill. More sick dogs breeding sick dogs to make sick puppies to be sold in the pet store.

Though it may break your heart to walk away from that cute, adoring face suffering in the pet store window, for the sake of ALL dogs EVERYWHERE, it is by far the very best thing you can do - walk away. If the pet store does not sell its puppies, it will not buy more to replace them. If the broker cannot sell more puppies to the pet store, he will not buy more puppies from the puppy mill. If the puppy mill cannot sell more puppies to the broker, or to the pet store, then there is no need to continue producing puppies.

And you know what? The funniest part about this is, the well-bred puppy - the one from a caring breeder who puts 200% of her time, effort and love into a litter - is the one that has a better chance of not being schitzy, or crazy, or timid, is the one that has a better chance of not being sick, is the one that will most likely live a long lifetime, and is the one that most times costs LESS than the puppies in the pet store.

Please, please, as much as it might pain your heart to do so, WALK AWAY from the pet store puppy.

For every pet shop selling live puppies and kittens, there are several, if not dozens, of pet supply stores - stores that do NOT sell live puppies and kittens, but simply cater to the needs of animal lovers and the supplies required to keep their beloved and loving pets comfortable, healthy, and whole.

Support of a pet shop selling live puppies and kittens encourages, endorses and condones the selling of those live animals. If you have the heart to walk away from the pet shop puppy because you KNOW that's the right thing to do, you must have the heart to never patronize that pet shop. Drive another 3 blocks to the store that does not sell live animals to find your food, grooming and other supplies needed for your pet.

If you wish to make a statement to the pet shop selling lives, then make it as loudly as you possibly can. It would not hurt to walk into that pet shop and exclaim to all who can hear that you will NOT patronize their store BECAUSE they sell live puppies and kittens, and they are raised in horrible conditions by people who do not care, and then walk out. Maybe, just maybe, you will cause another customer to take pause and think about where they are and what they are doing.

WARNING: Doing something so openly antagonistic may well bring trouble from the pet store. Be prepared for this and it may also be prudent to know the laws in your state before ever doing anything so overtly hostile as suggested here. There may be many things we might do or say, but we must ever and always remember there are consequences, always consequences, and we must believe the consequences well worth the act and be willing to pay those consequences, before the first step is ever taken, and long before it is too late ;-).