Pet shops treat puppies, and kittens as if they were fashion accessories and sell them to anyone who plunks down a credit card. Selling animals denies homes to homeless and unwanted animals who await adoption in animal shelters.
Most animals sold in pet stores come from mass-breeding facilities called puppy mills, where they are denied socialization, exercise, and veterinary care. The puppies are typically taken from their mothers at an early age, packed into crates, and trucked or flown hundreds of miles to brokers and then to pet stores, often without adequate food, water, or ventilation. Some puppies don't survive the grueling journey.
Conditions at many pet stores are inadequate at best; at worst, they are outright abusive. Puppies are often kept in wire-bottomed cages; Kittens are crammed into 4 foot high cages sometimes with 5-6 in a single cage.
Pet shops use the natural appeal of puppies and kittens to sell these animals at an inflated price—often several hundred dollars or more for “purebred” animals. Common problems in the pet-shop industry include selling sick and injured animals, failing to provide proper veterinary care, keeping animals in unsanitary conditions, and using inhumane methods to dispose of sick or unwanted animals.
Deprived of regular, loving human contact, puppies and kittens bought at pet stores are notoriously difficult to socialize and train. Compounded by the fact that, unlike good animal shelters, most pet stores don't bother to screen potential animal adopters, this means that many animals who are purchased on a whim by unprepared people end up at animal shelters.
Our goal is to get enough signatures to present this petition to the president and hopefully one day ban all pet stores from selling puppies and kittens across the entire country. Please help us with our fight!
