It is difficult to resist that adorable puppy in the window, but you may be paying a lot of money for a dog you know nothing about. Very often these pet shop puppies develop health issues, either almost immediately after purchase, or later in life because usually genetic issues are passed down from parents to puppies and your cute little puppy will soon cost you a lot of money to remedy. Imagine generation after generation of flawed and defective genes.
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| Do you know who your puppy's parents are? |
What’s the big deal if the puppies come with pedigree certs? Pedigree just means a piece of paper with names on it. It might just mean you’re paying more for the same set of health issues! Can the pet shop tell you how old your puppy’s grandparents lived till and what they died from? They probably don’t know any more than you do!
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| Do your puppy's parent look like this? Is he living a life of breeding hell because you are supporting the puppy trade? |
Some pet shops offer a one for one exchange but their guarantees may be bad as their reputation. A replacement puppy might not necessarily be healthier too and it is highly possible that they would have euthanized the sick puppy you returned because it is much cheaper to put it down than to take it to the vet. We heard that another common sales tactic is to blame you for not having taken good care of the puppy, or to tell you it will outgrow its health issue.
Why do you want to support puppy mills?
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| Puppy mill dogs |
The horror of puppy mills is encouraged every time a puppy is bought from a pet shop.
A pet shop usually never hears about their puppies once they leave the shop, and they really don't care. Once you take the puppy home, the pet shop doesn’t care if you lose your puppy, breed it continually or if it dies of liver failure at two years old. They won’t spare a thought for the “product’s” welfare.
So please, ADOPT and NOT SHOP.
Photographs courtesy of Davis KK.
