Thursday, December 11, 2008

Pet Store Puppies Should NOT Be On Your Holiday Shopping List

'Tis the season to buy puppies and traffic to the Puppies of Westport store is, as expected, up as people order puppies for their holiday gifts. Of course the orders are placed with the recipient often completely unprepared and of course unaware of where these dogs truly come from.

We saw a little brown poodle leave the store last weekend...such a sad cycle of abuse.

Let’s hope these puppy buyers are also seeing all the stories in the local press about devoted pets losing their homes due to the economy and foreclosure - on top of the pets that are relinquished every day for the litany of (mostly pathetic) reasons. We need to do more to help the pets that are already here and in need. We do not need puppy mill/pet store puppies adding to the mess.

And, in case you don't believe pet store pups are puppy mill pups - see our latest revelation that Puppies of Westport purchases from MAM Kennels - one of the puppy mills exposed in the latest HSUS investigation of the Petland chain of stores.

The good news is we have had a bunch of interest from students in the area doing school projects on puppy mills. This is a great step toward helping young people understand that pet store pups are puppy mill pups…which means they (hopefully) won't beg their parents for one. They will want to adopt and really rescue a dog. Let’s be real clear here: there is no such thing as "rescuing" a puppy from a pet store. Ask us...