Petland

A cou­ple of years ago in Iowa City, a new pet store opened in a part of town near our house. It was called Pet­land, and I was inter­ested. The only decent pet store around was a PetCo all the way up in Cedar Rapids. I took a look online, and dis­cov­ered a whole new world of ani­mal wel­fare issues. It appears that there are a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als ded­i­cated to boy­cotting Pet­land. They allege that Pet­land buys their pup­pies from puppy mills.

See the end of this post for links to infor­ma­tion about puppy mills.

Pet­land argues, in var­i­ous places, that they do no such thing. Instead, they will tell you that they get their pup­pies from “local breed­ers” or “bro­kers.” The Pet­land boy­cotters argue that when pressed, Pet­land own­ers rarely pro­duce breeder names, and those that are given out turn out to be “vol­ume breed­ers” with sev­eral hun­dred dogs. Pet­land never sug­gests that they don’t buy from bro­kers, just that these sources aren’t “puppy mills.”

I vol­un­teered at the ASPCA ani­mal shel­ter in NYC when I lived there. I worked in adop­tions, and it was one of the most dif­fi­cult things I have done. Before you start vol­un­teer­ing, you are required to attend an ani­mal euthana­sia pro­ce­dure. I’d always been an ani­mal lover, but my time at the ASPCA cemented in me an anger at peo­ple who would abuse or neglect an ani­mal. Still today it turns my stom­ach and makes me see red.

It does not mat­ter to me if Petland’s sup­pli­ers are puppy mills in the strictest def­i­n­i­tion. I would never buy a dog from a pet store because they treat their ani­mals like com­modi­ties. Not healthy enough, throw it back. Didn’t sur­vive being trucked from Mis­souri, well too bad. At least it was cheap. Oh, and they offer to let you return the dog if you’re not sat­is­fied. Like a vac­uum cleaner. That bla­tant dis­re­gard for life, that is abuse, in my book.

I refuse to even set foot in the store.

What should you do? Edu­cate your­self with the links below. Go to Pet­land and take a good look at the ani­mals, the con­di­tions they are kept in, ask some ques­tions about where they came from, and where those peo­ple got them.

And if you just want to play with the dog­gies, remem­ber that the shel­ter lets you do that, too.

Exten­sive link­ing is expected with this kind of issue, so here we go.  These links were updated on March 31, 2008.  Pet­land Rockford’s site had dis­ap­peared, and Petland’s Offi­cial site had changed.  Some other links were updated, too.

The best links:
See: Inside a Puppy Mill Video
and: How to buy a dog
and: 5 Easy Steps to Avoid Puppy Mills

Petland’s side of the story
See: Petland’s Pet Wel­fare Ques­tions
and: Pet­land Rock­ford used to have an “Ani­mal Extrem­ists” page (now via Way­back) but now they have a san­i­tized Pet­land Brand web site.

Anti-Petland opin­ions
See: The Voice For Dogs — Pet­land Cam­paign
and: The Voice For Dogs — Story of Tiva
and: The Voice For Dogs — For­mer Pet­land Employee
and: IDA’s Boy­cott Pet­land Site
and: Recent news arti­cles on Pet­land and Puppy Mills

Gen­eral Puppy Mill Infor­ma­tion
See: Facts on puppy Mills, from HSUS
and: Stop Puppy Mills, by HSUS
and: What is a Puppy Mill
and: Pris­on­ers of Greed