How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

Pet stores have cute puppies.

They don’t come from cute places.

Nearly every dog sold in a pet store originated from a puppy mill. In order to make money, puppy mills have to sell as many dogs as possible in as short a time as possible, while minimizing the financial investment they put into the dogs in order to maximize their profit.

For the parent dog, this means that it gets to spend his or her whole life in a cramped cage, pooping and peeing on top of other dogs, being underfed with poor quality food, and receiving little to no medical attention. When the breeding years are over, it’s common for puppy millers to dispose of these now-useless dogs by drowning, killing, or selling them at auction to other puppy millers or rescue groups like Puppy Mill Rescue.

Puppies are created by putting a male dog with a female dog that has proven to be able to carry a large number of puppies to term, and that can free-whelp. After all, a dog that needs a Cesarean section is one that’s too expensive to keep.

In puppy mills and pet shops, a puppy that looks like a [insert breed name here] gets sold as a [breed name]. If the parents were something else, it doesn’t matter, because by the time the puppy grows up and starts looking different, the pet shops and puppy miller have long ago cashed in their money.

The puppies born in these places get to be separated from their littermates and mother too early–before they’ve learned how to play without hurting, before they’ve been socialized, and before they receive the full benefit of their mother’s antibodies/immunity.

Then they get shipped off to pet stores, where they remain in small cages with lots of other animals and come into contact with germs from other animals and humans who walk in.

Kennel cough is prevalent, but kennel cough can be treated. Genetic problems may not show up for years, and at that point, there isn’t much you can do. There’s a lemon law for dogs purchased from pet stores, and many pet stores will also give you the option of returning the dog for a refund/replacement. But even if you’ve had the dog for only a week, what are the chances you’re going to return this dog that you love?

A pet store puppy costs you hundreds of dollars more than a rescue dog, and sometimes the same as the cost of a puppy from a breeder. But the quality of dog you get varies widely. Because puppymill dogs aren’t checked for genetic problems, the likelihood of your pet store puppy later developing a problem that requires your money to fix is much higher than if you’d spent a little more initially to purchase from a reputable breeder.

In addition, pet store pups can be more difficult to housetrain. Most housetraining relies on an understanding of the den or crate concept. But because pet store puppies are kept in cages in which they eat, sleep, and poop, they can have difficulty understanding that they aren’t supposed to poop in their sleeping area when you take them home.

Am I saying that puppies or dogs purchased from a pet store deserve less love? Absolutely not. But while you may try to convince yourself that a puppy you buy from a pet store is being “saved,” the truth is that every puppy you buy merely condemns another puppy to the same fate, and keeps its parents in hell for just a little longer. If you buy a puppy, someone has made a profit. And as long as they are making profits, puppy millers and pet shops who sell dogs will continue to do so.