Designer puppies shouldn't be sold for insanely high prices. There shouldn't be pet stores selling purebred puppies. If you want a purebred, go to the breeder, discuss with them. I don't feel any bit of sorrow for a pet store going out of business that sells "designer puppies" or purebreds that the breeder couldn't hold on to until they found a suitable home. Good breeders aren't selling their puppies to pet stores, they are holding on to their puppies until the appropriate home is found. And a good breeder is willing to take back that animal should anything go wrong and the "adopter" is unable to care for the puppy. So, yeah, I don't cry any tears for a pet store going under because they can no longer sell things we don't need.
Not saying a yorkalabrapoodle should go for $1500, nor do I necessarily feel sorry for those who purchase from mills losing profit. If these businesses can't afford to drop down to the dirt cheap shelter prices and end up going under, then what's the point of forcing them to carry shelter animals? I wonder if they'd get a piece of the funding so they could afford to feed/care for a pet and still sell it for $60.
Edit: @batsenecal, thoughts? If this were required of your pet store, what do you think would happen?
Sorry that I'm bringing this up again; I started my new job as an RD on the 4th and the girl running my building for the summer had nothing done before I got here, so I've been trying to get everything ready for 310 residents. Classes got started, so a lot of my time has gone from full to free, thankfully. But I did want to add my two cents. As PP mentioned here, and I've mentioned a few times, my family owns pet stores who sell dogs, cats, etc. I can give that perspective as that's been my life and is the number one reason for wanting to become a veterinarian. I understand how people feel about pet stores in general, and I understand that. I'm just going to give my perspective on the situation from how we run our stores.
If this passed in Colorado, we'd simply adapt to it as it would be law. There's no way around that. We would pick and chose which shelters we helped, however. We would most likely go to the shelters out in the boonies as those would be the shelters that are the least known in the state. Everyone knows about the Denver Dumb Friends League. No one knows about the tiny Cavalier rescue down by Pueblo. The DDFL is also super sketchy to begin with, so they would be our last choice. There's 256 shelters or so in Colorado, so it isn't like there wouldn't be anywhere to go to find dogs, cats, etc. We would probably pay the shelter their normal adoption fee (60-100$ is the norm for boonie shelters), jack it up 300% like we do now to 180-300$. Our employees would be straight minimum wage, with the possibility of our kennel techs being volunteers instead of paid employees. We also wouldn't offer the free veterinary exam or health guarantee we offer now. Currently, we do a free health exam and cover anything/everything found in the exam, six month hepatitis/distemper guarantee if vaccines are up to date, and a 12 genetic health guarantee. In the case of shelter animals, we would probably follow the protocol that area shelters use, which is 10 days. If something infectious comes up in 10 days, the shelter will cover it. Beyond that, then you're on your own. We would also work with veterinarians to contract for lower health care rates than what we currently have since we wouldn't be making as much overall. On average, it costs $250,000 to open a store and $65,000 a month to keep it open if your spaces is 1,500 square feet. I don't really foresee that happening with using shelter pets, but it would honestly depend on what sort of help we get from the department of ag, the shelter, veterinarians, and each other. It could potentially work, I honestly don't know.
Now, that is if it passed in Colorado. During the process of that becoming a law, we would fight it, and we do on an annual basis. We feel that no one should be able to tell us what we can or cannot sell if we can show/prove that our animals come from humane places. Every year, some city/town/county has a provision to not convert pet stores to "shelter stores" but to close us altogether. They never pass because we're able to prove that our animals come from humane places. There is one town in Colorado, Fountain, where the retail sale of animals is illegal, but the pet store there was grandfathered in (isn't our pet store; owned by a previous associate of my grandpa's). We've never closed a store because of pet store laws, animal rights groups, etc. Any store we've closed we did cause the mall died or, in one case for my mom's most recent store, the mall got a better offer on rent for the space.
If we saw the tides turning strongly, we would most likely swim with the tide (to a certain extent). But if the provision came from PETA, the HSUS, ALF, or any similar group, we would be completely against it as we don't want the agenda/opinions of any of those groups to gain further ground on principle alone. If it was state shelters says, "We need help. Can we work together?", it would be a different discussion altogether.
I'm not going to really get into anything further from there unless people want to. I know this is a topic that people feel strongly about and I don't want this conversation to go downhill due to different feelings. But in this situation, this is what we would probably do and, to a certain extent, why.
