My Theory about why pet stores have stopped selling puppies and why more puppy mills are being discovered

I have a theory as to why pet stores across Canada are stopping the sale of puppies in their stores - which is a wonderful thing - this picture is of a dog named Ebony who I fostered for 6 months who was tossed away from a puppy mill - most of her fur was gone, her teeth were rotten, she had hundreds of mammary tumours - but she had the sould of an angel. She was an awesome dog, and deserved to live the life of a pet and not livestock.

She was one of the lucky ones who did get to live like a pet and go to the beach, and sleep in a bed for the last couple years of her life. But thousands and thousands of dogs don't because they're nothing more than pieces of livestock who never see the light of day and have to live in their own piss and shit day after day and are raped every time they come into heat - I won't bore you anymore with the hell situations that go on - but suffice it to say that I'm happy that the puppy mills are being discovered in Quebec so that they can be shut down - although they exist all across Canada, and there are plenty of them in Nova Scotia that are as horrific as the one discovered in Quebec this week.

Dogs are treated so much worse than cows and chickens - mostly because there's a lot fewer regulations in place under the Agriculture regulationns because dogs are property, not livestock - so humans can do anything they want with them - but that's another blog post and has nothing to do with my theory.

Another pet store has shut down to the sale of dogs.

My theory goes like this.

PIJAC - the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council and Pet Lynx has been working on a document - "A Breeder Code of Practice" - for a couple of years - and I think the organization has got a bit too big for it's britches.

(It's interesting that the CVMA also has a breeder code of conduct as well that no one has brought up anywhere)

The pet stores across Canada read the document and suddenly realized that there was no way that they would be able to find any breeder who could actually follow those codes who could supply them puppies. All the people who supplied them puppies are actually the puppy mills who you see being raided on the news by Humane Society International - the really gross organizations who's puppies parents are driven crazy and just eventually killed, the puppies who can`t be sold because they`re so genetically malformed are used as breeding stock, no care is given to the mental health of the puppies - places like that - so all the big chains of pet stores have decided instead of being non-compliant on the breeder's code of practice - they're going to stop selling puppies altogether.

Pet's Unlimited down here in Eastern Caanada has said that only 7% of their revenue came from puppies - so that's not a lot of money to lose and can be made up easily elsewhere from the good will that they'll be engendering from the public for stopping the evil business of puppy mills.

Other chains have proven that selling puppies is completely unnecessary to have a good business model for pet stores - look at Global Pets and Pet Valu - neither of them have ever sold live animals - so it's definitely going to be a complete sucess - especially since they are now going to dedicate some of their former puppy space to local rescue to come and have off-site adoption days - that is going to be absolutely fabulous - and a critical part of the no kill equations - it'll save a lot of shelter dogs lives.

But now we come to the sticky problem of - what's happening with all the puppies and puppies parents that used to go to these same pet stores that are no longer selling puppies?

There's a huge glut that's been created.

That's why we're having horrible situations being found - the puppy mill owners have no where to sell the puppies to - their market has completely dried up.

The day of the puppy mill is over in Canada. I know our SPCA in Nova Scotia has been working with several puppy mills locally to place puppies and breeding stock when they've shut down in the last few month - because they realize their business has no use anymore.

I hope every puppy mill in Canada does the same thing - reach out to a local Humane Society or SPCA to place the puppies and breeding stock in their care - and have them adopted out to loving homes - and by the end of 2012 - there will be no more large scale puppy mills left in Canada.

And it will be all thanks to PIJAC and Pet Lynx thinking that breeders wanted to self-regulate itself like the CKC does.

What a colossal mis-step that was. If a puppymill owner wanted to live under a bunch of rules like the CKC breeder had to do - they'd have joined the CKC - puppy mills and small time breeders breeding dogs for profit do it so they don't have to follow anyone's "rules" - they do it to make money - pure and simple.

You'd think PIJAC would know that - because PIJAC exists for no other reason than to make money for it's members - breeders and pet stores alike.

But instead - in this case - they did people in rescue - and responsible breeders a huge favour. This is the first time I've ever felt it necessary to thank PIJAC - that is - if my theory is correct. Or it may all jst be a crock of shit.

I have disliked PIJAC from the moment I heard about them many years ago - anyone who would speak posiutively about pet stores who sell llive animals and actually market for them - and also breeders who sell to those pet stores and try to diminish the pain they are causing the animals they are breeding - is not a good organization - I hope PIJAC goes out of business now too - but I`m sure they will find another way to brand themselves - I hope their rebranding embraces marketing for rescue organizations - because they need all the free advertising they can get.  That would be a good thing in the end I think.  

I`ve got a category here for PIJAC if you want to go back and look at posts I`ve written about them in the past.

I'm including this article too, it was in today's paper - it really shows that the dog business is expanding exponentially in Nova Scotia today (I wonder why they didn't interview me for it :) ) -it shows you that there is such a need for people to be operating dog services locally - people speak with their money - and it appears that they are telling us loud and clear that when it comes to their dogs - price is no limit.