Hubby and I share a common interest – we love paying visits to pet shops and we often will find almost any excuses under the sun to go there, no matter how lame they might sound, from hammie needs new bath salt to hammie needs new beddings to hammie needs vitamins! We adore the pet shops for the simple reason that these are where we could catch a glimpse of those lovely four-legged friends which we so hope to have one. Until…..
Our last visit to one has left me coming out teary-eyed. It changed the way I will ever feel about pet shops again. In the display window, among the other rascals walking, jumping and playing in their cages, was this one small, skinny, quiet and sad-looking brown male toy poodle of about six weeks old. Whilst his other stronger siblings and counterparts were excited at the sight of the keepers walking up and down the aisle with food in their hands – it was feeding time – he was all curled up in one corner of the cage, as if too frail and weak to move. Not a bark, not a whine. For what felt like five minutes as I stood there watching him, there were only few movements that I spotted from him – he got up on fours, walked in a circle, then curled up in a fetal-like position and closed his eyes. And he wasn't even interested in his food when the other pups gobbled up theirs! He was a heartbreaking sight. No one seemed to notice the little guy. Was he in pain? Would he be all right? Most importantly, would he survive? A hundred and one questions ran through my mind. OK, I might have exaggerated a bit on the number of questions I had, but you get the point.
I am aware that sights like these are nothing unusual in pet shops. But it kind of makes me wonder….. Why do people buy dogs from pet shops when they could easily adopt one from the animal shelters - vaccinated, de-wormed and neutered/spayed - all for free? The way I see it, it is the status quo thing that is in play here. Yes, status quo - the mother of all f****d up mentalities. One will surely score high points being seen with a pedigree dog than with a mongrel, won’t they? Probably that’s the reason canine trades are booming like mushrooms these days.
My last visit to the pet shop has incidentally changed my perspective of the objective of the existence of these money-zapping profit making businesses. To say that the proprietors are animal lovers will be an overstatement. They may not even realise that there’s a sick animal under their so-called “care”! Or even if they did, they couldn’t care more. Their objective is to sell off the sick animal faster than the speed of light and make a humongous profit thereon – so lucrative is this business that they are smiling from ear to ear all the way to the bank! And what happens to dogs which have grown some and which are no longer seen as loveable? Are they being sold to cold hearted blockheads who use them for some stupid animal testing? Or will they then be returned to the breeders, like a loaf of expired bread? Then what next?? I dare not even imagine! This canine trading thing is the equivalent of human trading sans the law! It needs to stop! Only when the demand ends will the supply too!
Strays deserve a shot at life too, not just purebreds - though I must admit that not all purebreds’ lives are a bed of roses. There were times when I, whilst browsing through the animal adoption websites, came across Shit-zus being put up for adoptions simply because their nincompoop owners have come to their senses that they now cannot afford on the pretext that the dogs were taking up too much of their costs, time and attention. There was also a very sad case of a Shit-zu being abandoned at the doorsteps of the SPCA - in the city where I live - all because the dog’s blind!
It is for these reasons that canine trades must stop in the hope that they will not suffer the same ill-fated tragedies that befall the mongrels. Lest we forget, for every pedigree that is being sold, a stray ends up on the streets. The lucky ones end up in the animal sanctuaries, awaiting a second chance at life. The unlucky ones end up being beaten to death or as road kills. If one could just spare a minute and visit the animal shelters, one would discover that for every homeless animal there, there is a very sad story to its existence and why it is there. When one look into those luminous eyes it is hard to believe that no soul exists behind those eyes.
If only we could forget about status quo and have a heart for the abandoned animals…… we would be making such a huge difference to a precious little life.
