LOS ANGELES ( AP) — More puppies are sold at pet stores during the holiday season than any other time of year. Now the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other groups are stepping up efforts to stop these sales, saying many of these dogs come from puppy mills.
Forty billboards in Los Angeles this month encourage people to fight puppy mills by boycotting pet stores and websites that sell puppies. More than 50,000 people have signed a pledge on the ASPCA’s website vowing to uphold the boycott, and the ASPCA has an online database of targeted stores at nopetstorepuppies.com encouraging consumers to shop elsewhere. Consumers can also report a store to the ASPCA, and the organization will verify the source of its puppies.
“ We are not just saying ‘Don’t buy a puppy,’ but ‘Don’t buy anything in a pet store that sells puppies,’” said Cori Menkin, senior director of the ASPCA’s anti-puppy mills campaign. “If pet stores are not able to turn a profit, they will stop selling puppies.”
The Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society and many other groups are promoting similar initiatives.
As malls and chains drop the commercial sale of puppies, one change for consumers is an increase in convenient locations for shelter adoptions.
In October, Jack’s Pets announced they would no longer sell puppies at their 27 stores in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. They are working with shelters to offer in-store adoptions instead. Major chains like PetSmart Inc. and Petco Animal Supplies Inc. stopped selling dogs and cats several years ago, partnering with local shelters and rescues on weekend adoption events. Best Friends has helped several traditional pet stores convert to shelter sales.
Macerich Co., a regional shopping mall company, recently announced a ban on traditional pet stores at its 70 malls. Instead, at the company’s mall in Lakewood, Calif., shoppers will find a store called Adopt & Shop, which gets its animals from the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter. On Nov. 25, the store celebrated its 500th adoption, said Aimee Gilbreath, executive director of Found Animals, the organization that runs and subsidizes Adopt & Shop.
Some pet store owners say they’re being unfairly maligned.
Jens Larsen, who owns Perfect Pets in Littleton, Colo., is on the ASPCA list and says it’s not right. He has been in business for 18 years, sold 1,600 puppies last year and has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. He gets 80 percent of his dogs from commercial breeders in Nebraska, 10 percent from breeders in Kansas and Oklahoma and 10 percent from two Colorado breeders, he said.
Some animal activists are “ radical and fanatical and want to put me out of business,” he said. “I obey the law. So do my breeders and the kennels I deal with,” Larsen said.
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