We care, but do we care enough???

A Modesto, CA petshop closed its doors on Christmas Eve after five years of selling puppies. It was the second location for the owners who intend to keep their original location open. A handwritten note on the front door cited the economy as a reason for the closure.

Convenient the last-minute, impulse buying of puppies as gifts for Christmas still occurred before they closed the petshop on Christmas Eve and not before the holiday puppy-buying season began. Many of those same puppies will undoubtedly show up in our California shelters a few months down the road.

Purely an economic decision and not an ethical or moral one.

There are many who say the downturn in the economy will finally create a dent in the puppy mill industry. Something good might come out of this chaos.

Shelters are reporting increases of 5 to 10% in owner turn-ins of family, citing the economy as the reason. The Los Angeles shelter system instituted a new program called "Operation Safety Net" which basically asks each owner, “What would it take for you to keep this pet instead of surrendering it?” and then seeks to solve the problems cited. Vet bills, an inability to pay for licenses or food, etc. have been listed, and they attempt to help or resolve those reasons to keep a family pet with its family.

The LA system has also begun a program to locate ‘pet-friendly’ rentals around the city. A long-time reason cited for people relinquishing their pets is moving and an inability to find housing that will allow them to take their animals with them. So, for many owners, the top reason cited for years was ‘moving’ and is now ‘the economy.’

It is more politically correct right now, I guess. You can offer only so many solutions to someone wanting to dump a dog or cat onto someone else or an organization. I’ve always been told in marketing a person will cite at least one or two palatable reasons before you actually hear the true reason – usually number three or four is the actual reason for the action or refusal to buy, according to marketing statistics. So if you are trying to make the sale, you keep asking until you get the true reason and that’s the one you concentrate on.

Read statistics from just about any source and you will learn that Americans view their pets as members of the family. With the recent economy downswing, experts cite that people will give up other costs in their lifestyles before relinquishing their pets, simply because they view them as family.

So if this statement is true – that pet owners love and care about their pets like members of their family – why are we still calling them pet owners? How do you "own" a family member?

Simply put because we are not guardians or protectorates of our pets – we are still owners in the legal sense. And until we are no longer owners of personal property in this country, the pet trade will continue unbridled as it has. Backyard breeders and puppy millers cite their rights under the law to do whatever they want with their livestock.

It’s a business to them – to those who have pets inside our homes, the law views us as owners and adheres responsibilities to us accordingly – and we view our pets as family members. But bottom line? Isn’t it still the same living, breathing being that we’re discussing here?

This is the bottom line problem with the pet trade industry – just as it is in the shelter system. Regardless of how you want to label or define it, citing a host of labels, reasons, and positions – we humans as a society simply don’t care enough.

If it is true that the economy is lowering the production levels of the puppy millers and backyard breeders, would this NOT be the time to attack the problem of definitions, legal loopholes and a lack of natural rights for these animals we’ve breed, wholesaled and victimized as pets and family members?

It is much easier to solve a problem when it is not so overwhelming and far reaching.

The economy just as with life revolves in cycles and circles. It is a law of physics for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction and energy is never lost but instead transformed. This is the time – NOW – to mobilize and tell our legislators we want an end to the pet trade industry as it exists in this country.

Petshops should only be offering rescued dogs and cats in their stores. Backyard breeders must be held just as accountable for the massive overpopulation of unwanted pets as the puppy millers are. Taxpayers (whether they own a pet or not) should no longer be shouldering the burden of housing, maintaining and eventually killing the pets which do not get adopted out of the shelter systems.

It only takes the flutter of a butterfly’s wings to be eventually felt around the world – if only we can begin the grassroots movement that tells those in charge we’re sick and tired of this, and we’re not going to take it any more.