S.F. considers banning sale of pets except fish

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To see what really happens when a city bans pet sales, you have to go to Albuquerque, N.M. The Southwestern city banned sales of "companion animals," including cats and dogs, in 2006, and has seen a marked, positive effect, said Peggy Weigle, executive director of Animal Humane New Mexico.

Since the ban started, animal adoptions have increased 23 percent and euthanasia at city shelters has decreased by 35 percent.


“By stopping these pet shops,” Weigle said, “what you're really doing is you're reducing the demand for puppy-mill puppies.”

At the same time, Weigle said, her private animal shelter has stepped in to fill the place of pet stores for people who want pets but don't necessarily want to brave the city shelter. In February, Animal Humane New Mexico opened a boutique-style adoption center with just a few hand-picked animals — mostly puppies, many of them pure-bred dogs that were abandoned or rescued by the shelter — so that people could "shop" for shelter dogs in a pleasant, retail-like environment.


Her goal was to adopt out 45 animals in the first month; instead, they placed 118 animals in new homes. Adoptions have been so plentiful, Weigle said, that her organization is preparing to open a second adoption boutique. Weigle said she recently had a young purebred Yorkshire Terrier available for adoption for just $135, the standard adoption fee.

"Many people will say, 'Oh, I just can't go to the shelter, it's just too sad,'" Weigle said. "But if you make a guilt-free shopping experience available, and they don't have to be confronted with 100 homeless pets staring them in the face, the shopping experience is very parallel to a pet store. If you give the public a choice to shop in that kind of an environment, they will."

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37359894/ns/health-pet_health/

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In the US, according to many estimates, more than four million cats and dogs are killed in shelters every year. That’s a difficult figure to comprehend, but what it actually means is that more than 280 cats and 180 dogs are put to death every single hour of every single day. All the while, puppy mills alone breed an estimated two to four million dogs in the US every year.

What many people do not realize about shelter animals is that they don’t all come from homes where they are no longer wanted. Many of them are actually ‘unsold’ animals from pet stores themselves. In addition to those who end up being killed at the shelters, there are inestimable numbers of pet store animals who end up being ‘disposed of’ some other way. According to some sources, these animals can end up being killed on site, or, probably more frequently, they get returned to the breeder. In the case of animals from mills, this likely means they end up being killed at the mill, turned into breeding animals, or sometimes even sold to vivisection labs.

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To see what really happens when a city bans pet sales, you have to go to Albuquerque, N.M. The Southwestern city banned sales of "companion animals," including cats and dogs, in 2006, and has seen a marked, positive effect, said

Peggy Weigle, executive director of Animal Humane New Mexico.

Since the ban started, animal adoptions have increased 23 percent and euthanasia at city shelters has decreased by 35 percent.

“By stopping these pet shops,” Weigle said, “what you're really doing is you're reducing the demand for puppy-mill puppies.