There is a chain around here called PetLand that sells puppies that they get from puppy mills. Please do not give them your business.
I see indie neighborhood pet stores, but most don’t sell animals; mainly high-end dog food, toys, and the like. There’s a large-ish independent pet store a couple of miles from my house that does sell dogs and cats. I refuse to shop there.
Petsmart and Petco stores near me usually have a group of cages with rescue cats for adoption.
I think Petland is a chain that still sells dogs and cats.
I haven’t seen a old-school mall pet store in ages.
Apparently, now that Proposition B has passed, Ohio is going to be Puppy Mill Central. Unless Prop B gets overturned, which is possible. I know this thread is in danger of turning into Great Debates, so I shall say no more. But I live in Ohio, and I have two rescued puppy mill dogs.
I did a quick search and I’m finding claims made by customers who took them at their word and then ran their pedigree numbers (or whatever number is listed on the animals’ papers) by anti-mill sites only to find that their animals did, in fact, come from mills. You’re right to stay away.
As to the OP, the closest major mall, Arizona Mills, has a pet store with puppies and kittens in the window for sale. When I was in Baton Rouge we walked by a similar store. So they’re out there.
Yes they are still about. Re: Puppies: SOME stores buy from mills, others really do utilize local breeders and take the litters on consignment. Those that do consignment will have all the information there for you to review, and may require that the breed pop over to approve you. Like anything else, you have to do your homework. A good indicator is to note the breeds, and prices available. If it’s a bunch of designer dogs, particularly the toy breeds for sale at prices at a grand or more, it is most likely a mill operation. The biggest key will be that there is only one or two of each breed. Random pups from larger breeds, full litters, and the occasional mutt litter for a reasonable price? Almost always locally produced consignment.
-Acid Lamp, Former exotic pet store owner.
Heh. That article contains the unintentionally ironic sentence from an actual puppy miller (who sells about a hundred dogs a year as a cash venture): “It’s going to cause a lot of pain and grief for people who have invested their lives in a business.”
Yeah, like he’s concerned about pain and grief.
While it may be worth mentioning, PetSmart (and PetCo, for that matter) are huge supporters of rescue. They don’t have to support rescue, no matter where you decide to obtain a pet from, you will have to buy supplies for the pet. PetCo and PetSmart are often conveniently located and competitively priced. From the PetSmart Foundation website:
We have an Adoption Center within a PetSmart store. The store provides litter and food for the cats at the center. They give the new adoptive pet parent a free bag of food (Purina One) and for cats a free container of litter (Tidy Cats) as well as giving the adoption agency money (in our case $15/adoption). They essentially give away $30 for each cat or dog adopted through one of their partners. Yes, the hope is that the customer will be repeat business for them, but they are not obligated to do as much as they do.
The PetCo Foundation is a similar endeavor. They hold seminars throughout the US for rescue organizations and the like. I have attended a few of their seminars and found them a very valuable networking resource as well as a good educational tool for rescues and shelters. They fund grants for spay and neuter clinics, special events and capital campaigns. If your rescue had a need for 500 lbs of cat litter or 20 dog beds, you can apply for a product grant.
PetSmart and PetCo, IMHO, are nothing like a traditional pet store. I have gotten calls from the manager of PetSmart because someone dumped kittens in their bathroom. One called me when someone left 2 baby ducks(!) in a box on their front step. I had no flipping idea what to do with baby ducks, but called around and found a farm rescue who would take them. I have seen them house a pregnant guinea pig someone else dumped on them and find all the little baby pigs good homes.
Last I checked there were a few even chain pet stores here in Texas. Also, a year or two ago I was in Great Falls, MT and on the main drag was a petstore that appeared to have been tbere forever. The conditions were horrible, but they had a whole plexiglass sided wall cage with monkeys. Friggen monkeys. That area is notknown for lots of money or a need for monkeys. I am guessing the regulations there were fairly non-existant.
We have a store near our house that sells puppies and kittens. I suspect they are from mills. I would never buy a dog from there, but I do sometimes take my daughter in to look at the cute puppies.
It’s extremely interesting that the three “Puppy Mill Central” locations so far mentioned in this thread (SE PA, Ohio and Missouri) all have concentrations of Amish communities. A quick Google shows that Indiana is another state where Amish communities and puppy mills are both prevalent. Correlation or causation?
My sister just adopted a puppy from a shelter that is specifically helping Amish puppy mills to close down shop. The shelter is buying all stock from the farmer in exchange for a promise that they stay out of the puppy business.
From what I’ve been told, the Amish look at the dogs as livestock, not pets. And in general, they do not treat their livestock very well.
Huh?
There are at least two in my small town.
One moved into my town too. It got sold to a different owner after a parvo outbreak scandal covered in the local news, then finally closed a few months back. I definitely didn’t give them any business.
They sold puppies from puppy mills (of course they wouldn’t put it like that, but that was the truth). The local Craigslist pets group got tons of people complaining about their puppies from there being sick or dying, and people posted pretty much every day to remind people to avoid the place.
I went in there once with some people who just wanted to look at puppies for awhile. It was pretty sad - the dogs just didn’t look good. Many cages had multiple puppies, and a lot them were quite dirty too, with missing items like mats to sleep on instead of on the wire mesh floor. To their (very small) credit, they had one rescue cat available, but it wasn’t through a local shelter. We asked about it and got very cryptic answers from the staff as to where it came from, and wouldn’t give us adoption info either (they said he would be available in a few weeks… but not sure why he was in a prominent display on the showroom floor in that case). Not sure what that was about.
Until recently, there was a Petland around here that sold dogs and cats. They’re now converting to adoptions only. I went there for the first time yesterday. I would not ever have shopped there before this change.
Total coincidence: I was in one - in a mall - less than an hour ago. Had maybe 20 puppies on display, each one cuter than the last.
mmm
Yeah, my local upscale shopping mall has a puppy mill store, complete with the classic glass wall of barking dogs in cages. I do wonder if they just turn off the lights at 10 when the mall closes and show up again 12 hours later and hose off the filth. It looks like a horrible way for dogs to live, but I don’t own the mall.
I worked at one years ago - Docktor Pet, for you New England folk - and they seemed to be a halfway decent operation. I got my beloved Boston from there and to my admittedly untrained eye her paperwork seemed legit. We had a vet in there regularly and - the details are hazy twenty years on - the guarantee behind the pups’ health was better than other chains in the area. Of course, I never did see them delivered so for all I know they came in on the truck from Missouri (Pluggy was born in Iowa, now that I think about it) but their cages were always clean and they certainly seemed to be in good health and good spirits for as long as I worked there.
This isn’t to say that there weren’t (and aren’t) unscrupulous pet store chains out there, but just because a store sold dogs didn’t mean it was a mill outlet.
The last mall I was in had one. I think it was the Natick Mall in Natick MA. I might be wrong but I’m picturing it in my head, across from a pretzel shop. They sell dogs.
My town doesn’t have a pet store. The closest pet store to me doesn’t sell any pets (except painted hermit crabs). That is where we buy most of our supplies. There is a pet store in Palmer MA that sells pets up to (and possibly including) rabbits. I might be wrong on the rabbits but they definitely sell rodents.
As much as I LOATHE the bastard, Rick Santorum did sponsor a bill to try to stop, or at the very least, reduce puppy mills. I have to give the guy credit for that. (Sadly, the bill didn’t go through)