You can write the BC SPCA President and Board of Directors and tell them that you expect them to instruct their executive and staff to urge municipal governments to adopt bylaws regulating the keeping of animals by pet stores. Especially important is that puppies be allowed daily free run exercise for several periods, social play with humans and other pups, and no isolation. You can suggest that the SPCA use the Standards of Care that AAS proposed.

Write Rick Sargent, President of the BC SPCA, at roxiegirl@shaw.ca

HUMANE TREATMENT OF PUPS IN PET STORES:
THE AAS PROPOSAL FOR PET STORE REGULATIONS

In 1999, AAS sent the following request, with the above pictures, to the Mayors and Councillors of Abbotsford, Burnaby, Chilliwack, Coquitlam, Delta, Langley City, Langley Township, Maple Ridge, Mission, New Westminster, Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver, West Vancouver, and White Rock, in British Columbia

THE NEED FOR PET STORE BYLAWS FOR DOGS AND PUPS

Puppies silently suffer in the misery of pet stores, victims of the bottom line, and victims of the lack of the enforcement of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in B.C. We ask that this municipality adopt our proposal for Humane Treatment of Pet Store Pups, and also the North Vancouver District Pet Store Regulations bylaws, with our recommendations for their improvement.

Breaches of common, humane treatment of animals have been reported to us by many people, about almost every pet store we know of, and we hope you will provide protection for the helpless animals that are just merchandise to pet store owners.AAS's letter requested regulations to prohibit:

1. Isolation 2. Tiny Cages 3. Metal-grid cage bottoms

1. Isolation -We would truly like to see pups kennelled only at night, and then with at least one other pup for company. And that pups be kept in a common play area during the day.

Puppies get along with each other, and it would vastly help their healthy socialization, and their physical health too, as wrestling and playing helps their bones and muscles develop properly, and chewing on each other helps their teeth and jaws form properly, and teaches them social skills necessary for them to have long, happy, lives, and not be rejected and euthanized because of behaviour problems. There is no physical reason to justify the extreme cruelty of keeping puppies in isolation. Dogs are by nature the most gregarious creatures in the world. They do not wish to be alone for even one minute, much less months. Their physical and mental well-being requires the company of other dogs. Yet they are taken from their mothers and siblings at a tender age and put in lonely, torturous cages.

As for the objection that they may contract diseases from each other: the diseases are airborne, or transferred on staffs' and customers' hands; and the pups are supposed to be certified healthy, and to have had their vaccines.

2. Tiny cages - we would like to see kennels that are large enough to hold several pups.

We have witnessed a six-month old dog in a cage so small that it had to stand with its feet in its food and water bowls, and perpetually bow its head. Pups need each other for comfort and security when they are sleeping. When they are not sleeping, they should be in the common play area.

3. Metal-grid cage floors - designed for quick (and therefore cheap) cleaning of urine and feces.

Pet store owners may pay the breeder as little as $300 for a pup that they are trying to sell for $1000 or more. That’s why the pups are forced to endure such long periods of miserable, lonely isolation, and the physical cruelty of steel racks to live on which have been designed for quick (and therefore cheap) cleaning of the urine and feces, and where they sometimes stay isolated for many months. Pet store owners, in contradiction to their insistence that they treat their merchandise humanely, are reluctant to infringe on their bottom line by spending money to treat these helpless pups with common kindness.