Monday, May 26, 2008

Anti-Cruelty Bikers Join Protest

The Memorial Day Weekend protest was the highest profile to date. Our friends at Bikers Against Animal Cruelty rode in to join us. They do amazing work for animals and, like us, can't believe people are crazy enough to support the puppy mill industry by handing over their credit cards at Puppies of Westport.

Thanks for joining us guys! Looking forward to working with you on future projects.

Check out this video of the day on May 24...see the bikers in action!



We also had a visit from WestportNow whose reporter wrote a piece on the latest state of affairs with Puppies of Westport.

Two other interesting experiences this week that exemplifies the complexity of this issue and the amazing amount of education that needs to be done:

1) Another bad source for puppies:
A demonstrator was chatting at her vet's office with a client who came in with a new puppy. It turns out the person had been to Puppies of Westport and was apparently turned off by the high cost, and just didn't get a good feeling when she was then offered a reduced price. She left without buying, but then she turned to the Internet and purchased a puppy online. Even though she offered to pick the puppy up, the "breeder" insisted on delivering. This is a typical tactic of internet greeders. Just like pet stores, they don't want you to see where the puppies come from. There are NO regulations of Internet puppy sales and an adorable Web site with puppies plunked into flower pots is no proof that you are not buying from a puppy mill. Don't buy the propaganda. If you want help researching a breeder before you buy, please contact us. We strongly encourage seeing a breeder in person.

2) “Rescuing” puppies from stores is unfortunately not the answer:
A woman who was upset stopped to talk to us at the protest today. She wondered how we could not care about the puppies in the store that are growing too large for their cages, and was basically blaming us for the fact that these puppies hadn’t sold. One demonstrator asked her if we were also responsible for the state of the economy and other factors that might affect sales. Of course we care about these puppies but someone has to look behind the curtain and care about the moms of the puppies. As much as we all want to rescue the puppies in the store (and these are the exact emotions that the stores bank on to move inventory), we know that if we buy all the older puppies, it just opens up cage space for the store to order more 8 week old puppies. So just imagine...if people stopped buying puppies in stores and they all got too big for the cages, eventually the stores would be forced to reduce their price (ie their profit). Once the profit disappeared from selling puppies, the puppy business would dry up. It's that simple. It's like any other business. The goal is profit. Health and wellbeing of the livestock is secondary at best.

All this serves as a reminder to anyone who sees conditions in any store that concern you - there are three very important things you should do:

1) Contact us at SavePuppyMillDogs
2) Call Westport Animal Control (203) 341-5076 or the local animal control officer in your community
3) Call Officer Jarvis at the Dept of Agriculture ((860)713-2506) to report stores in Fairfield County.

Don't hesitate to make those calls - it's one of the few things that will make a difference.

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