Golden Retriever Puppies in Pet Shops
Every pet shop that sells Golden Retriever puppies will assure you, solemnly, that their puppies are different. Their puppies don't come from puppy mills, but from fine local breeders. Pillars of the community, in fact.
| The reality is that responsible breeders will never place one of their puppies in a pet shop, or anywhere else for resale or consignment. Never, ever, ever. Any breeder who has placed their puppy in a pet shop has immediately disqualified himself as a responsible breeder. |
WHY?
Because, as commercial establishments, pet shops are required to sell a puppy to anyone who can pay. Legally, they are not allowed to "screen" buyers for suitability. Responsible breeders wouldn't be able to sleep at night wondering which of their puppies might have gone to an unsuitable home and was not being properly cared for.
| But my local pet shop says... |
Yes, yes, yes. The pet store industry has manuals and trade journals that teach the employees of pet shops exactly what to say to persuade you to buy. Their marketing ploys include:
- "We buy only from local breeders."
- A breeder is either responsible or irresponsible. Geographical location makes no difference whatsoever. Whether a breeder is "local" or lives in Timbuktu, whether he has produced only one litter or many litters -- if he has placed his puppies in pet shops, his breeding practices are irresponsible.
| Ask the pet store for the phone number of one of these local breeders. Call them with the interview questions recommended in my book, Your Purebred Puppy: A Buyer's Guide. They will all fail. |
- "We buy only from USDA-licensed breeders."
- USDA stands for the United States Department of Agriculture. Their business is supposed to be livestock. They know nothing whatsoever about dogs. As long as a breeder's paperwork is in order, the facilities are disinfected, cages are a minimum size, and no infectious diseases such as distemper are immediately obvious, the kennel passes.
The USDA has not the slightest interest in...
- whether the breeder knows anything about his breed.
- whether the dogs used for breeding look like their breed.
- whether the dogs used for breeding act like their breed.
- whether the dogs used for breeding are free of genetic health problems such as hip dysplasia, eye diseases, or heart defects.
 USDA Breeder is a label to stay away from. The only reason someone would apply for this license is to crank out lots of puppies -- which is a puppy mill.
- "Health guaranteed!"
- This "reassuring" platitude is how pet shops and irresponsible breeders seek to get around the expenses of genetic testing.
| Pet stores offer to replace puppies with health problems rather than trying to avoid the health problems in the first place. Avoiding health problems would require their "wonderful" breeders to do health tests on any parent dog used for breeding. Health tests include X-raying hips and elbows, looking for hip and elbow dysplasia. Health tests include having a canine ophthalmologist examine the eyes, looking for eye diseases. Health tests include cardiac exams and blood tests. |
Let's look at it from the PUPPY'S point of view. Health guarantees don't help a puppy at all! YOU get your money back, sure, but the poor puppy still has to live with the health problem that could have been avoided -- if his breeder had been seeking to produce healthy lives rather than seeking to keep his expenses down.
We're talking about quality of life here. Don't support breeders or pet shops who care so little about the future life of their puppies that they do not require health testing of the parents BEFORE breeding.
| Pet shops aren't too worried about their "guarantees", by the way. They don't have to honor most of them, because most inherited health problems don't show up for six months or a year or two years. Either the guarantee has expired by then, or most owners will refuse to return a dog they've had for that long. |
| Temperament and behavior problems, too! |
Obedience instructors and behavioral consultants will be all too glad to tell you about the temperament and behavior problems that develop in many puppies from pet shops as they grow up.
 Most puppies from pet stores start out playful and friendly, but as they mature, their genes begin to assert themselves. If their parents or grandparents had shy or aggressive or hyperactive temperaments, those genes will show up during adolescence and adulthood.
Many puppies from pet shops are nippy. Some were removed from their mother before 7 weeks of age, a critical period of time where she teaches them "bite inhibition." Some have learned to nip from interacting with so many potential owners wandering through the pet shop, including kids who tug and play roughly. Pet stores are NOT a place where any puppy should spend even a single day.
 Finally, raised in a small cage in which they're encouraged to eliminate freely, puppies from pet shops are notoriously difficult to housebreak.
| The major reason not to buy -- supporting the industry |
You may wish you could "rescue" a pet shop puppy. That's completely understandable. We all feel sorry for them.
But your good intentions will backfire, because you are feeding the pet store industry by rewarding it with money.
You've emptied one cage, yes -- which creates demand for yet another litter to be produced to fill that cage. Even if you're very, very lucky, and your one individual pet shop puppy turns out okay, a large percentage of the others will not -- and YOU provided the incentive for them to be born by buying the one who came before them.
So what seems like a simple, isolated purchase actually contributes to:
- The misery of adult females who spend their lives in a cage, being bred again and again to provide puppies that you and others can buy.
- The misery of these puppies born with health and temperament problems.
- The misery of the families who have to cope with the health and temperament problems.
- The misery of the animal rescue groups trying to deal with the flood of pet shop puppies dumped on their doorstep because so many families give up on the health and temperament problems.
| I hope it's clear that when you buy one of those cute puppies in the pet shop window, you buy much more than the puppy. You buy the budding physical and behavioral problems created by the bad genes passed on by untested parents whom you never get to see and evaluate.
Worse than that, you buy into a profit-hungry industry that hurts innocent animals. Simply out of good conscience, pet shops should not be anyone's choice as a source for a puppy. |
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