Is Puppy Trade Good or Bad?

Is Puppy Trade Good or Bad?

        According to Wikipedia, ‘puppy’ refers to baby dogs specifically. Yet, in vernacular English, puppy could also refer to other mammals which aged under one year old. In this essay, I would like to especially define ‘puppy’ as little cats and dogs which are the most popular pets in Hong Kong, and also to discuss whether puppy trade is good or bad.

Numerous people have affection for purebred puppies or kittens, because of their unique and cute appearance, and may because of the belief that purebreds are smarter and closer to people. And most of them would select a simpler and direct way to gain the ownership of those purebred little pets. These may be the reasons why puppy trade still exists with a large amount. As reported by AFCD (Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department), the average number of puppies sold in pet shops is 577 every month. This means that there are about 19 puppies being sold every day. Not so many of them, however, could realize the truth behind puppy trade.

In fact, there may be numberless reasons to purchase a puppy from pet shops, but some unthinking reasons could undoubtedly encourage the increase of homeless animals. Some people may even regard the purchase of a pet as merely consumption, such as buy it as a present. The SPCA executive director in Singapore, Fang Yueming, mentioned that “Based on the past experience, many people buy a pet as a gift for friends and family, without considering whether the receivers are well-prepared and capable to take care of a pet.” As a result, once the receivers find that actually they could not bear the responsibility of keeping a pet, they may choose to give up on it. Moreover, purchasing pet by following trends becomes another unthinking reason. And the trend of the animation called “101 Dalmatians” produced by Disney Studio would be one of the examples. According to a research done by the Humane Society of the United States, after the release of “101 Dalmatians”, animal shelters and Dalmatian rescue organizations have received these abandoned dogs with an over 30% increase, only within six months. And predictably, the impulsive purchases like these could be the cause of raising the number of strays and euthanasia.

        Based on the official website of SPCA of Hong Kong [The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals], over 1,000 of pets are abandoned every year. And once they are abandoned, they became strays. In 2011, SPCA handled 5,800 stray dogs and 3,557 stray cats totally. However, this does not mean SPCA could have ‘saved’ them. In fact, SPCA is not a profit-aimed organization, thus it has limitation of resources for saving animals. Most of the strays having no adopter have to be killed by euthanasia. In 2011, actually, only approximately 1,000 of them were adopted. And 3,600 of the remaining were euthanized, which was about 38% of them.

In addition to strays and euthanasia, illegal puppy mill is another serious problem behind puppy trade. As defined by Canada’s National Companion Animal Coalition, a “puppy mill” is a high-volume, unqualified dog breeding operation that mass-produce puppies and put profit above welfare, which living conditions for their dogs are deplorable. Fisanick (2011) has even used the phrase “torture chamber” to replace “puppy mill”. You could picture it as a warehouse with ‘row after row and shelf after shelf of inventory stuffed into cramped, makeshift cages’ (P.184). The animals there could only live with poor-quality food and limited space, and repeat to give births to their purebred puppies until they die. And because of the poor living condition of puppy mill, most of the puppies born there have diseases. An animal-concerned organization, Happy Animals, has done a research in 2007. The research involved 209 interviewees in total, and 109 out of 209 interviewees have the experience of purchasing pets from pet shops. However, 36 interviewees have bought the sick pets, and unfortunately, 11 of them could not cure the pet’s disease, and their pets died of the disease eventually.

Nonetheless, most of the people buy puppies from pet shops could not be aware about the source of the puppies. Although there were totally 155 licensed dog shops in Hong Kong, most of their puppies are supplied by non-licensed suppliers. According to a research done by FEHD [Food and Environmental Hygiene Department] in 2012, 74% of puppy dogs sold by these licensed pet shops were supplied by “self-claimed local private dog breeders”. And these breeders own five mother dogs and supply two puppies every month averagely. However, FEHD found that over 50% of dogs in some of the dominant dog shops are supplied by merely one to two private breeders. These statistics indicate that those self-claimed private dog breeders may likely be the commercial dog breeders. In other words, even when you buy a puppy from the licensed pet shop, you would not know whether the puppy was supplied by puppy mill; and if it was, you would be the one who support the existence of puppy mill.

        To alleviate or even solve the above-mentioned problems, I would like to suggest various recommendations in two aspects, which are the consumer aspect and the government aspect. For the consumer aspect, it is necessary to educate and promote that adoption would be a better choice of owning a pet other than purchasing. As I mentioned before, SPCA handled a large number of animals every year. Most of them are as cute as the pets in the pet shops, and some of them are purebred pets. The most important point is that if they are adopted, they will not have to die by euthanasia. Yet, some people may still insist on buying pets from pet shops. In this case, “Think before Buy” seems a simple but actually effective suggestion. Before buying puppies, at least six questions should be considered:

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