SUBMITTED: Thursday, April 06, 2006
POSTED: Thursday, April 06, 2006
NEVER buy a puppy from a petstore! This ripoff report is a textbook illustration of what happens when you do. Petstores that sell live puppies are the retail outlets for the wholesale pet industry (puppymills). Puppies from these wholesalers are subjected to long journeys in tractor trailers while still too young to have received their final booster shots against parvo and other canine diseases with the obvious end result of disease. Many are infested with worms as well. A large number of these pups die en route or shortly upon arriving at their destination.
If you want to put this industry out of business, do not purchase a puppy or anything else from a petshop that sells puppies. Do not even go into such an establishment if you have a young puppy at home. There are many documented cases of people bringing home parvovirus on their shoes or via an item purchased.
Another way to curtail this cruel industry would be legislation prohibiting the transfer of puppies under the age of 6 mos to another location for (re)sale. If a market still existed for older puppies at least they could be fully innoculated at this age and thus stand a better chance of surviving the trip to the petstore.
BUY a puppy from a reputable show breeder or from a person who has bred their family pet and has home-raised puppies for sale. Both charge less and provide more (ie vaccinations, worming, AKC papers, proper socialization and early training). Most petstore puppies are registered with a sham registry because the required dna testing for AKC registration would reveal that these puppies are not purebred.