Pet Stores : Stop the Demand, End the Supply

Puppies and kittens are adorable animals. Sweet, cuddly, affectionate, but when you've seen these little baby animals in the windows of a pet store, have you ever wondered where they came from to get to the pet store? A sad fact is that most of these animals that are provided to the pet stores to be sold to you are from animal mills.

What is an animal mill?
An animal mill is a person and/or group of people who will continually and often constantly breed their animals to be sold to pet stores to later be bought by you. These animals being bred often face terrible living conditions, over-breeding, inbreeding, lack of human socialization, and very little veterinary care. Animal mills only have one thing in mind: Profit.

An animal mill is a horrible place to live, to grow, and in a lot of cases, to die. Puppies and kittens are often kept in tight quarters, crammed together in crates that are usually considered too small for more than one animal and are forced to live there, to grow there while they wait to be sold to a pet store. Often there is a just as cruel fate to the animals that are deemed unwanted by the pet stores these mills work for or sell to; these animals are often killed or 'culled'. To a pet or animal mill, an unwanted animal is a useless animal that will get them no profit and therefore many are put to death for such a crude and unjustifiable reason.

And still it continues to get worse.

Often an animal can only breed so many times before they become infertile. When this happens often these animals become unwanted and are deemed useless to the mills as they can no longer provide the babies these people need to sell and are put to death. Why keep an animal alive when it has now become useless to them?

But won't I be saving these animals by getting them away from the pet store?
This question is a sad and hard one to face. Even if you save that one adorable puppy there, another one will take it's place simply because someone bought a puppy and so the pet store or the breeder will feel the need to make up for that one being bought. This means breeding more puppies or kittens or any sort of animal simply because there is a demand for it. In the end, you may save one but you could doom 10 more for doing so. It's very cruel and it's not easy to just overlook seeing these animals in some stores and knowing they probably came from a mill, and knowing that if you save this one, you could doom all that many more to that same life.''

Stop The Demand, End The Supply
For every person that chooses to adopt instead of going to a pet store to get that 'super cute' or 'totally adorable' animal, that is one more person helping stop the demand for animal mills to breed animals for these stores. If the store can't turn a profit on these animals then there is no real point to them having anyone breed said animal for them, is there? Animal mills are inhumane and many don't care at all for the welfare of the animals they breed. One such example is listed below from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They managed to infiltrate an animal mill specializing in smaller animals, hamsters, gerbils, rats, guinea pigs, etc.

CAUTION: The provided links will show you some of the barest horrors of animal mills, namely those for the small animals like rats, gerbils, guinea pigs, etc. Those who do not have strong stomachs or are ill should not check the links provided as they have disturbing photos and a graphic video.

PETA Blog On Animal Cruelty - Video not for faint hearted

Netherlands Rodent Farm - A.k.a. Rodent Mill

Please, think before you stop by a pet store and buy these animals. Their lives have been cruel and while it still hurts my heart to pass them by, I know that doing this helps at least a little to stop the demand for pet stores to buy from these awful animal mills.
Think about adopting from a shelter before you look at buying from a pet store. Often these animals left at shelters came from the same background but adopting them from a shelter does not support this practice of animal mills and still you are saving one animal in the millions that need it.

Stop the Demand, End the Supply