If you’re faced with the option to either adopt or purchase a dog from a store, there should be no hesitation in choosing the adoption route. The most honorable thing someone can do is give an animal a second chance at having a loving family and home.

Supporting pet stores should never be an option for anyone who is looking to get a dog. I don’t understand how pet stores are still around when they don’t have good intentions or put their animals’ interests first.

“I know there are still some puppy stores and actual pet stores. They’re only there because people are shopping in them. If people weren’t shopping in them, they wouldn’t have any reason to be around,” Krystine DeGrande, the Operations Supervisor at Paw Works, said.

According to their website, Paw Works is a 501(c)(3) animal charity, non-profit corporation.

Because pet stores have turned animals into opportunities for profit, they don’t think of their animals as anything, but a means to make money. Often, dogs being sold at a pet store have multiple physical and emotional issues because of this reason. They aren’t thought of as living things, and therefore are treated and bred in an unhealthy or unusual manner.

“Personally, 20 years ago, I purchased a dog from a puppy farm and it was a purebred dog and that dog had so many problems because of all the inbreeding that takes place,” DeGrande said.

Although some shelter dogs have bad backgrounds, there is a common misconception that dogs from a shelter are either broken or damaged to the point of no return. However, when shelters take in their dogs, they assess what is wrong with their temperament and come up with a plan to improve it.

“We have a couple dogs that were turned in to a different shelter to be euthanized from the puppy mill because there was a flaw in them and we were able to take them out and save them. We had two that were blind. They were born blind so they were taken to be euthanized from the puppy mill,” Linda Thomas, the operations manager at Tiny Loving Canines Rescue, said.

Even though going to a shelter or rescue doesn’t guarantee you having the perfect dog, the dog that you get will end up suiting your personal lifestyle.

“Even if they do have flaws, don’t we all? You have to be there to help the animals. If that’s not what it’s about, then what are you doing in the first place,” DeGrande said.

Going to a pet store gives you a larger possibility of having a dog that has many physical and mental issues. If you were stuck in a small glass case that was constantly being poked and tapped, you would be driven to act out too.

“Going to the rescue side, we have so many dogs out there that need to be saved that so many people don’t look at because they’re not purebred. It’s really sad, but purebreds have a lot of issues,” Virginia Hearn, the kennel supervisor at the Ventura County Animal Services, said.

Interestingly enough, some dog stores have a no-return policy. Once someone buys a dog from a store, they are not able to return the dog if it ends up with a health issue.

“They don’t take their animals back. People buy their dogs from dog stores, and they end up having issues and turn them into us because they can’t keep it and the stores don’t take their animals back,” Thomas said.

Some stores and puppy mills even have policies that if a dog isn’t sold by a certain time, they are to be sent away or euthanized.

“Not as many stores do, but some puppy mills have strict policies that include killing a dog that is considered ‘unvaluable’ because it isn’t sold right away, so it’s a very cutthroat business, and that’s what it is – a business. That’s all it is,” said Degrande.

If you want to think about giving out dogs for profit in a business sense, other stores take their products back because they stand by it, so not instituting a return policy implies that you don’t even stand by what you’re selling.

Sarin Goncuian
Staff Writer
Published March 9th, 2016