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| An increasingly rare sight -- the pet shop puppy. |
Los Angeles Councilmember Paul Koretz has proposed legislation to ban the sale of puppies in Los Angeles pet shops.
Excellent! Awesome. Now, here's a question:
Are there really very many puppies being sold in Los Angeles?
I do not live in Los Angeles, so I cannot tell you based on experience walking around LA, but I can tell you that it's been at least two decades since I saw a puppy being sold in a pet store.
I shot out a quick email to a half dozen other dog people around the country, and they too said they had not seen a pet store puppy in years.
A little more research and I turned up a list of the top pet store chains in the country. Here they are:
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- PetSmart: PetSmart was the first "big-box" pet superstore chain. Founded by John Doherty in Phoenix in 1987, it is publicly traded, and has over 1,135 stores across the country doing more than $5-billion worth of business. It has NO puppy sales.
. - PETCO: PETCO was created in 1967 but remained a California-only chain until 1987, when it hired a manager from Toys R Us to grow the chain. PETCO quickly bought up 200 smaller pet stores across the country, and today it has over 950 stores doing more than $2.5 billion in sales. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Pet Supplies “Plus”: Pet Supplies “Plus” was started in Michigan and is the largest franchised pet store chain in the U.S. with 225 stores in 22 midwest and eastern states. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Pet Valu: Pet Value operates in Ontario, Canada and in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. (mainly Pennsylvania and Delaware) and it has 350 stores. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Petland: Petland once had 140 franchised stores across U.S., and is the largest pet store chain that sells puppies, but it appears to only sell puppies in a minority of stores and this chain is actually gettting smaller. HSUS initiated a lawsuit against Petland for puppy sales, but reports only 21 Petland stores selling puppies, and at least one of those stores has since quit the practice. Not said by HSUS: Petland stores have placed more than 310,000 homeless pets through their stores, including over 72,000 puppies and dogs and over 230,00 kittens and cats.
. - Pet Supermarket: Pet Supermarket has 115 stores in Florida and the Southeastern United States. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Pet Food Express: Pet Food Express has 34 stores in Northern California. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Complete Petmart: Complete Petmart is a chain with 32 stores in Ohio and North Carolina. It has NO puppy sales..
. - Petland Discounts: Petland Discounts is a small chain in New York. It has NO puppy sales.
. - Pet Depot: Pet Depot is a small franchise with less than 30 stores scattered across the U.S and Canada. It has NO puppy sales.
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Today's "big box stores" like Wal-Mart and Target (to say nothing of huge supermarket chains like Safeway, Publix, Krogers, and Food Lion), are where most people now buy their dog food, leashes, collars, dog bowls, dog beds and even dog houses.
And then, of course, there are the online stores with deep discounts, endless variety, and ease of stay-at-home shopping: Amazon, Drs. Foster and Smith, KV Supply, PetEdge, and the like.
Which is not to say that there are no longer pet stores that sell puppies.
The point is that most of these operations are small outfits and are (for the most part) undercapitalized and fairly marginal businesses.
How many puppies are sold every year through these small-time pet stores?
The simple truth is that no one knows.
Numbers are tossed around (I will give my own best-guess in a minute based on a literature review), but for all of the anti-puppy mill web sites that exist, I could not find one that offered up a state-based list of pet stores selling puppies. Pretty odd!
One clue as to the relative extent of pet store sales is to look at the biggest player in the business, the Hunte Corporation.
Contrary to popular belief, Hunte does not breed its own dogs, but instead operates as a broker or "buncher" of commercially-bred dogs that are then vet-inspected, vaccinated, and trucked to pet stores across the U.S.
Hunte's top management not only sits in the American Kennel Club box at the Westminster dog show, they are such an important registrar of AKC dogs that the Kennel Club has created a computer program so their pet-store puppies can be directly registered even before they hit the parking lot.
And how much business is Hunte doing?
The Hunte Corporation is moving about 80,000 puppies a year.
That may sound like a phenomenal amount of dogs (it is), but it helps to put a denominator on it.
In a country of about 75 million dogs, with a new-puppy acquisition rate of over 7 million dogs a year, 80,000 puppies represents less than 1.2 percent of all dog sales.
Of course the Hunte Corporation is not the only broker or supplier of pet store dogs. Other pet store puppy suppliers include Lambriar Kennels in Kansas, Mid-America Pet Broker in Missouri, Tracy’s K & J Pets in Missouri, and Perfect Puppies in Iowa, to name just five large brokers.
So what's my best guess of total pet store puppy sales based on my own review of the literature?
My best guess is that about 250,000 puppies are sold in approximately 2,500 pet stores across the U.S.
This represents, by my calculation, less than 4 pecent of all puppy sales in the U.S. and this number is clearly coming down as more cities and towns ban pet store puppy sales altogether and as Internet sales (including on-line classified listings such as Craigslist) expand.
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Where do pet stores sales of puppies rank on the canine "misery index" here in the U.S.?
That's a hard question.
To start, let's give a nod to the fact that most pet stores puppies are healthy and most end up in loving homes despite the fact that their purchasers are dangerously clueless people.
Most pet store puppies are up-to-snuff on their vaccines, and most move to new homes pretty quickly, and do not suffer from lack of stimulation or socialization (pet store puppies see a lot of people and other pets while on display).
Inbred? No more than any other Kennel Club dog, and probably less.
Health care testing? Very few Kennel Club breeders health test their dogs for anything. As for the 53% of dogs in America that are mutts or crossbreeds, health tests for these animals were never even considered.
And, truth be told, some pet shop puppy brokers do a few things well. For example, the two largest puppy brokers in the U.S. -- Hunte and Lambriar -- microchip all their puppies for lifetime identification. How many AKC breeder can say that?
So what's the problem with puppy mills dogs?
The problem is not necessarily in the store -- it's back in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, or Pennsylvania.... out of sight, but not out of mind.
Back there, far from prying eyes, are thousands and thousands of breeder bitches warehoused in wire-bottom cages with no room to run, and little human contact or mental stimulation.
These dogs are "bred until dead."
Most Americans think this is cruelty on stilts, and I am one of them.
That said, it's worth putting a number on it.
How many misery-dams are we talking about?
Based on the number of puppies being whelped it's likely to be 50,000 to 60,000 dogs.
That's a hell of a lot of misery, but it barely scales on a graph next to the nearly one million Pit Bulls that are whelped, acquired, and then abandoned to be killed in local "shelters" by America's "pit bull lovers."
And how does it compare next to the number of dogs languishing unloved and ignored in the back yards of countless "hobby" show dog breeders and owners across the nation?
Forgot about them, did you? I don't! Do you really think anyone with 20 dogs in a kennel in their backyard and a full-time day job actually does anything with those dogs more than pooper-scoop and (maybe) bathe them once in a while?
And what of the huge number of brachycephalic breeds which struggle every day to simply breathe?
In 2006, the American Kennel Club registered over 21,000 English Bulldogs. Assuming a Bulldog only lives for 6 years (a good assumption!), that means there's at least twice as many English Bulldogs in America as there are puppy mill dams, and most of these flat-faced and heavy-headed dogs are having a hard time breathing. How do you count that misery?
None of this is meant to make light of puppy mills or pet shop sales.
It is to say, however, that the scope of canine pain in the United States is a lot larger that pet shop puppies alone.
The good news is that a lot of folks are focused on pet shops and puppy mills, and problems there appear to be in decline.
But what about the rest of it? Who will lead in these other arenas?
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- Related Posts:
** Ten Tips to Finding the Right Dog
** Hump and Dump Dog Breeders - Note: This post is a recreation of a post that was deleted during a 30-hour nation-wide Google Blogger outage. Posts and comments were supposed to be restored, but that has not happened yet so I pulled this from the email bin on my computer. Apologies for lost comments; the old posts and comments may yet come back in which case I will delete this version.
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12 comments:
I wish that were the case in my city. We have a population of between 500,000-750,000 people (depending on what you're counting, pre- or post-amalgamation) and four local stores THAT I KNOW OF that carry puppies and kittens.
And surprise, surprise, one of them is a PetLand. One is a Ruffins (another chain), one is a Big Al's (also a chain, but a small one), and the last is a private store known as "The Urban Zoo." In the next city there are two major malls - both have private pet stores that sell puppies and kitten located in the mall. The PetLand referenced above is located in our largest and most popular mall.
Our dog-carrying pet stores are not disappearing - they are increasing. Not only that, the stores that do carry puppies and kittens are regularly expanding their kennel areas.
If these stores are decreasing in your area, that's awesome. But the same is not true everywhere.
I invite you out to the wilds of Wyoming, where pet stores are thriving because of lack of decent breeders, puppies for sale in the paper, and/or puppies up for adoption at the shelter. Walk into any actual mall in this state and you will find a pet store with puppies for sell. Heck, even in the high end mall in the Denver Tech Center has a pet shop with puppies - even though they have outlawed acrylic nail stores there because it "disturbs the senses." Sorry, I digressed...
Not too long ago 20 puppies died from distemper from a Pet City in Cheyenne, WY: http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2010/09/19/news/19local_09-19-10.txt
Sad. Very, very sad.
One additional note - I'm just curious where you came up with your estimated data.
For example, according to the USDA "In FY 2008, there were 4,604 licensed breeders and 1,116 licensed brokers."
Your estimation of 250,000 puppies a year is sorely low, I'm afraid. What you're suggesting is that the average USDA certified breeder (taking into consideration the HUGE number of puppy mills that are NOT registered) is putting out a max average of 55 puppies each.
Judging by the recent cull of a THOUSAND dogs at a single kennel, I have a really hard time believing that the average USDA kennel puts out only 55 puppies a year.
As for your estimate of 50,000-60,000 breeding dogs, again this suggests that the average breeder has 11-13 breeding animals. Given that 10-20 dogs is considered a pretty low number and considering the number of raids on mills holding hundreds and hundreds of dogs and puppies 11-13 is a pretty conservative estimate, wouldn't you say?
I get the point you're trying to make - that we're outraged and taking action against the abuses of puppy mills but consider the deformation of our dogs into shapes like the Bulldog as not only acceptable but beneficial. I get it. But it's not an equal comparison.
Dogs kept in these conditions are living in a state of torture. You can equate the suffering of a Bulldog to that of a puppy mill dog, but that doesn't make them equal.
http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/33002-4-SF.pdf
I suggest taking a close look at the photos.
I also have to question your assertion that pet store puppies are healthy - this is patently false. Having worked in a vet clinic and having seen these puppies first hand (and formerly employed by a pet store that sold puppies) I can assure you that if they're physically healthy it's nothing short of a miracle. The only study I can cite is old, but 48% of pet store puppies in California were found to be either ill or harbouring an illness at the time of purchase.
Dog House, you do not appear to be in America, but Ontario, Canada.
Ruffins is a franchise operation with seven pet stores, all in Canada, and the Urban Zoo has a single location. The only Big Als I can find seems to be an aquarium and reptile store that also sells some puppies.
A profile of Ruffins can be read here >> http://www.petproductnews.com/web-exclusives/retailer-profile-ruffins-pet-centres.aspx
The profile is built around the fact that "super stores" are generally killing the smaller single and small chain stores.
Ruffin's is an exception and they are very small stores -- 2 ,000 to 4,000 square feet -- so it sounds like expansion is limited at any one location. Their locations appear to be in small towns and, as the profile notes, "Our average sale is what we call pocket money. The average sale is less than $20.”
In short this profile supports what I have said -- pet stores that sell puppies do exist, but they are in generally marginal markets and are getting hammered by the big box stores like WalMart.
I should also note that Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, has just passed the first Canadian all-city ban on pet shop puppy sales. More to come -- it only became effective last month.
P
Yes, I am in Canada - but we're not talking France. We have a very similar culture, and the fact is that among Joe Public pet store puppies are 100% acceptable.
The Big Box store and the boutique stores are not competition for one another. The few major brands they carry they do so for the convenience of customers who like being able to pick up their pet food closer to home and don't mind paying a bit more. The vast majority of their business is in small, specialty, private labels.
It's like saying that fast food chains are competing with fine dining establishments. It's all food, but it's not the same customer base.
As for store size, for a boutique pet store, 1300-1500 sq. ft is pretty average. 2000-3000 is a larger store, the size you'd see in the mall. 4,000 square foot stores are not common. With stacking kennel systems, it's easy to keep a large stock in a very small area. These dogs are contained in tiny pens, most of them 2' x 2'.
I'm not suggesting that pet store puppies make up a giant percentage of the overall puppies sold - but they never did. Are they falling out of favour in certain areas? Yes, they are. And we are VERY proud of Richmond (equally as disappointed with Nova Scotia). But in most areas sales are very strong - and to top it off puppy sales are becoming more and more lucrative now that people seem willing to pay $1500+ for dogs of extremely questionable origin (and breed, in many cases). We rescued a Bulldog this year that was purchased in a NY pet store two years prior - for $3,900. And it was financed! (wtf?)
Not a day went by in my last job - 5 years at a very popular boutique chain well known for our refusal to carry ANY live animals - that I didn't get at least one phone call asking me if we had any (insert breed here) available and how much were they?
I wish I could agree with you, but what I'm seeing and what you're describing are two very different things - and apparently not too different than HurricaneDeck's area of Wyoming.
Yep, Hurricane Deck. I would expect nothing less in Wyoming. The state has more pronghorn than people, and even your biggest "city" ain't much. You only have one Member of the House in the entire state and you're over represented with that one Member of Congress as you only have a population of about 500,000. On the upside, you have great fishing and beautiful mountains. But urban y'all ain't!
Over represented? Thems fighin' words! Just kidding. I am still amazed that they even let us have the one - I would appreciate it if they would send our former Miss Frontier Days home to stay.
On the other hand, we did crank out Alan Simpson, who, while no long even in Wyoming, is still good for stirring up trouble in some way or another, and usually in an amusing fashion.
Dog House, your calculations start from the wrong place and make a lot of leaping assumptions. To be fair, this is done all the time in this debate, so let me walk through some of the more commonly cited data sets...
For starters, not all USDA "A" license holders are raising dogs -- many are raising cats, birds, rabbits, and some are even raising llamas. When you go to the USDA list and see "Angies House of Birds" or whatever, she is not selling dogs but parrots, and "Sue's Sugars" is selling sugar gliders (think flying squirrel) not puppies.
"A" license holders that ARE raising dogs (most, but not all) are not necessarily "puppy mills," however that term is defined.
"A" license holders include anyone with commercially-breeding animals, including show dog breeders, bird dog breeders, guard dog breeders, laboratory dog breeders, and breeders that sell dogs through non-pet store venues (i.e. pet magazines, the internet, breed publications, etc).
You have jumped on to the following logic train: 1) ALL USDA license holders are dog breeders (not true) >> 2) ALL commercial dog breeders are puppy mills (not true) >> 3) ALL puppy mills sell through pet stores (not true >> 4) ALL commercially bred dogs sold in pet stores come from horrible places (certainly possible, and maybe likely, but certainly not universally true).
If you are starting with PET SHOP PUPPIES (as this post does), the place to start is with pet shops.
There are about 8,000 pet stores in the US (and no, Canada is not part of the U.S.) and they all have business licenses.
The HSUS says that "a third" of all pet stores sell puppies, but in fact not even a third of Petland stores sell puppies, and they are the poster child (according to HSUS) for pet shop puppy sales. As I note in this post, out of 140 Petland stores, HSUS seems to have only been able to find 21 stores selling puppies -- 15 percent. If we apply this same 15% ratio to those 8,000 pet stores across the U.S., we get 1,200 pet stores selling puppies.
In fact, that's about the number of pet stores selling puppie that the folks at petshoppuppies.org say actually exist from their analysis of over 7,000 bills of sale from all over the US. See >>
http://www.petshoppuppies.org/pspstore.htm where they note:
"According to the data we have collected in over 6,000 puppy reports, there are approximately 1,500 pet stores in the U.S. that sell puppies. "
Note too that http://www.petshoppuppies.org actually graphs out the data by state too. Excellent! If you look at that graph, however, you will find that most states have VERY FEW pet shops selling puppies, and yet I cannot help but notice that NO anti-pet shop puppy advocate or organization that I can find publishes a list of pet stores in even ONE state that sells puppies.
Why not?
As a general rule, I find that when advocates omit data and specficity, they are doing that because the facts do not quite support the frame.
Now, to be clear, and to repeat what I said in the post, this post is NOT an apology for puppy mills or an exumation of where all commercially bred dogs go (more on that later) or where dogs in general come from (more on that later as well), but simply a post on pet store puppies -- always a small segment of the market, and now a declining share of the market for the reasons explained.
P
Dog House --
The driver of pet store puppy sales does not appear to be market segmentation (McDonald's vs French restaurant) as you suggest, but the general lack of access to other easy sales venues (small town locations as in Hurricane Deck's Wyoming) or the particularly heavy traffic of stupid young women (trendy parts of NY and LA, beach towns, etc).
Think about it... Do people who do not care where their dogs come from ALSO care a great deal about what their dogs eat?
Or is the situation a little simpler: if you live in Flint Rock, Maine and you need a big bag of dog food or a leash, you have to go to the pet store because the local "Shifty Lube Gasoline and Mart" only sells small bags and no leashes. And if you are in the Village in New York or West Hollywood in Los Angeles, or near the beach in Miami or New Jersey, you barely need to sell dog food at all -- you just need to make sure you are located where a teady stream of bored young women are likely to come buy and fall in love with a Frenchie or a Yorkie or a Chihuahua or a Cockerpoo. I hate to sound sexist in this last part, but the data on who buys puppies at pet stores is pretty clear ;-(
P
As noted at the end of the post, this post was entirely deleted with a 30-hour nation-wide blogger crash.
I will not repost all comments, but will add this one which is my response to a question about the number of USDA "A" license holders.
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Calculations based on USAD "A" license holders start with from the wrong place and make a lot of leaping assumptions. To be fair, this is done all the time in this debate, so let me walk through some of the more commonly cited data sets...
For starters, not all USDA "A" license holders are raising dogs -- many are raising cats, birds, rabbits, and some are even raising llamas. When you go to the USDA list and see "Angies House of Birds," she is not selling dogs but parrots, and "Sue's Sugars" is selling sugar gliders (think flying squirrel) not puppies.
"A" license holders that ARE raising dogs (most, but not all) are not necessarily "puppy mills," however that term is defined.
"A" license holders include anyone with commercially-breeding animals, including show dog breeders, bird dog breeders, guard dog breeders, laboratory dog breeders, and breeders that sell dogs through non-pet store venues (i.e. pet magazines, the internet, breed publications, etc).
The logic train that is best avoided is this one: 1) ALL USDA license holders are dog breeders (not true) >> 2) ALL commercial dog breeders are puppy mills (not true) >> 3) ALL puppy mills sell through pet stores (not true) >> 4) ALL commercially bred dogs sold in pet stores come from horrible places (certainly possible, and maybe likely, but certainly not universally true).
If you are starting with PET SHOP PUPPIES (as this post does), the place to start is with pet shops.
There are about 8,000 pet stores in the US, and they all have business licenses.
The HSUS says that "a third" of all pet stores sell puppies, but in fact not even a third of Petland stores sell puppies, and they are the poster child (according to HSUS) for pet shop puppy sales. As I note in this post, out of 140 Petland stores, HSUS seems to have only been able to find 21 stores selling puppies -- 15 percent. If we apply this same 15% ratio to those 8,000 pet stores across the U.S., we get 1,200 pet stores selling puppies.
In fact, that's about the number of pet stores selling puppie that the folks at petshoppuppies.org say actually exist from their analysis of over 7,000 bills of sale from all over the US. See >>
http://www.petshoppuppies.org/pspstore.htm where they note:
"According to the data we have collected in over 6,000 puppy reports, there are approximately 1,500 pet stores in the U.S. that sell puppies. "
Note too that http://www.petshoppuppies.org actually graphs out the data by state too. Excellent! If you look at that graph, however, you will find that most states have VERY FEW pet shops selling puppies, and yet I cannot help but notice that NO anti-pet shop puppy advocate or organization that I can find publishes a list of pet stores in even ONE state that sells puppies.
Why not?
As a general rule, I find that when advocates omit data and specficity, they are doing that because the facts do not quite support the frame.
Now, to be clear, and to repeat what I said in the post, this post is NOT an apology for puppy mills or an exumation of where all commercially bred dogs go (more on that later) or where dogs in general come from (more on that later as well), but simply a post on pet store puppies -- always a small segment of the market, and now a declining share of the market for the reasons explained.
P
I didn't see the previous comments on this blog that were deleted, so this may have already been said. You are mistaken in your claim that only a small percentage of Petland stores sell puppies. I looked at the HSUS link you provided which says they "visited" 21 stores. There’s nothing to indicate that ONLY 21 stores sell puppies. Here's a link listing Petland stores by state, with some information about the source of puppies in each store. Far more than 21 stores selling puppies are listed.
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/puppy_mills/facts/petland_stores.html
The truth is that very few Petland stores DON’T sell puppies. And frankly, Petland’s adopt-a-pet program doesn’t erase the fact that they help keep puppy mills in business. I’ve noticed many Petland stores are trying to form relationships with local shelters to counteract negative publicity and build credibility in their communities. Check out Petland Laredo’s facebook page as a good example of this. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Petland stores continue to sell poorly bred puppies from disreputable sources.
In Ohio (to take a state at random) Petland has stores in:
Athens,
Cambridge
Chillicothe
Cincinnati Fairfield
Columbus Bethel Road
Columbus Hilliard
Dayton York Commons
Gallipolis
Heath
Hillsboro
Lewis Center
Marietta
Marion
Pickerington
Portsmouth-New Boston
Powell
South Point
Strongsville
And how many pet stores does your HSUS link mention? ONE store in Akron -- that's it! And, for the record, the Akron store is now out of business (and has been since 2009), so the Ohio count is actually ZERO.
In Virginia, HSUS lists three stores selling puppies, but in fact there are only two Petland stores at all.
And so it goes....
As a general rule, if an organization is going to spend $300 an hour on a lawyer to file a class action or RICO case, they are going to put down ALL of the problems they find.
HSUS mentioned only 21 stores in their RICO suit which was filed and dismissed, and then refiled and mostly dismissed again.
P
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