Our newspaper now has the following policy:
In an effort to protect our animals, we will no longer accept “Pets wanted” advertisements. We will continue to accept “Pets for sale” advertisements.
How does this protect animals? What kind of nefarious things were happening to the pets in the “pets wanted” ads? The only thing that I can think of is some people were stealing pets to sell to the pets wanted people to make a quick buck.
Damn.
Now I’ll have to start buying hamburger again.
Anyone who wants A pet can read the classifieds. Anyone who posts a “pets wanted” ad is looking for a lot of responses, presumably because he wants a lot of animals, presumably because he’s going to sell them to a lab. Getting lab animals that way is wrong for many reasons, the least of which is that it’s bad science.
Another very bad idea is the “free to good home” ad. Sometimes, the people who show up looking for a free dog or cat are looking for test animals or cadavers for anatomy class.
Why is that? Because you don’t know the animal’s background?
What is the preferred way to obtain animals for research? From a company that breeds and raises them for that specific purpose?
Free puppies and kittens make good snake food. 
I’ve also read that people who train dogs for dog fights use free puppies and kittens to train the dogs to be viscious. This could be an urban legend tho’.
Exactly. There are a lot of labs that specifically breed research mice, rats, g. pigs, dogs, pigs, hamsters, etc.
I’m also going to second the snake suggestion. When I had a python you wouldn’t believe the number of people who commented because I actually bought rats for her. “You can get kittens for free from the paper, you know…” :eek:
Okay, thanks. I guess then you also know that they’re free of disease, etc.
As someone who has played with other people’s pet rats, and owned pet kittens, I cannot understand exactly why I’m so horrified by the one but not the other, and yet I am.
My brother is involved in dog rescue stuff (mostly greyhounds,) and he does an occasional run to deliver dogs to Chigago. That’s right, to Chicago. The spay-and-neuter programs in Chicagoland are so effective that they have a shortage of adoptable pets. We could learn a lot from Chicagoans.