Do you think it’s fair that pets are being treated like toys?
How do you feel about Petland stores selling animals? The on-going issue in Calgary is that there are untrustworthy owners bringing in their pets to pet stores and the purchaser is unaware of the pet’s history. Petland claims that the animals that are sold in Petland are from trustworthy breeders. Do you believe that Calgary should ban Petland from selling animals even though this store has been running for years? Currently, there is a campaign being held to prohibit animals/pets from being sold in Calgary stores. The group that is in charge of this campaign is called Actions Speak Louder (Calgary) and the group plans on making this proposal a city bylaw. How do you feel about this?
Though Calgary may get rid of all Petland stores, how do we control the people who sell their pets on the streets? Many people would prefer adopting pets or receiving them from friends/family and animal shelters. This could be the solution to this problem because of the conflicts with purchasing pets/animals from the pet stores. If there are other resources available, why do we have pet stores? When someone purchases a pet from a pet store, they are unaware of its family history and this is what makes pet stores unreliable, in my opinion.
Do you believe Calgary should make this a bylaw? If you do, GET INVOLVED! Join the Actions Speak Louder and spread the word because we all deserve our voices to be heard!
Great to see your group getting youth involved in helping and protecting animals in need. There are some really effective ways youth can help animals and help end animal homelessness and exploitation in our community. Pet stores represent a very small portion of the animals sold in our community each year, and are also very public spaces that animal protection officers from Calgary Humane Society can inspect at any time. Further, PetLand has a lifetime guarantee that it will take back and rehome any pet if the owner chooses or has to surrender.
What is really scary is the growth of internet sales and exploitation of animals. Currently, Calgary has the third highest number of animal ads on the internet (just below Toronto and Montreal each of which has several million more citizens). These sales are completely unregulated and Calgary Humane Society is seeing more and more pets surrendered who were purchased off the internet (about 30% of all our dogs were sourced fromt he internet).
Adding to the problem of pet homelessness is the growing practice of importing animals from out of the country. When I did research on this in May 2011, 46% of the dogs offered for adoption in our city were imported from out of the country. This at a time when our city has 20,000 homeless animals each year and surrounding communities are overwhelmed by homeless dogs, cats and rabbits.
Banning pet sales from retail stores does not address the key reasons there are so many homeless pets: irresponsible breeding, breeding for profit, and complete lack of regulation of the pet industry.
I strongly recommend you focus youth efforts on the causes of animal suffering and exploitation rather than this issue that will may actually be a boost to internet sales.
Patricia Cameron
Executive Director
Calgary Humane Society