An early Christmas present to pet storeowners last week has proprietors shaking their heads in disbelief. Dogs, cats and rabbits are now forbidden to be sold in pet shops. Only a licensed breeder can now sell them to the public. It’s called The Puppy Mill Pipeline Act and it is sponsored by none other than Astoria’s Senator Mike Gianaris.
Just try to find a licensed breeder…..
When our family purchased a cockapoo from Bob’s Pet Store on Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood, she was an instant hit with our family. After four months, Mocha started walking into walls. When the vet told us the pooch needed cataract surgery we called Bob’s only to be told we could return the dog and get one of ‘equal or lesser value.’ She wasn’t a pair of sneakers for goodness sake, but when we asked what they would do with Mocha we were told, “what does it matter?”
Yikes. She was part of the family. We, of course kept her and nearly $15,000 of operations over the next decade later, we had to keep her going. She became fully blind pretty early on. Later we were told she was probably bred in a puppy mill and many products of this type of breeding lead to things like this.
We would jokingly threaten her with “Back to Bob’s.” In fact when our kids acted up we would jeer “Back to Bob’s.”
Stories like this are surely common, and undoubtedly led to the genesis of this new law that will effectively put most pet shops out of business. The law aims to eliminate the pipeline that moves dogs and cats from these mills to the pet stores. We can’t argue with eliminating puppy mills and stopping the pipeline, but eliminating it by crushing the retail seller can’t be the answer. We’re now relying on people to buy their pets to actually go to certified puppy breeders? We are not convinced in the attorney general’s explanation that this law will make people “…. will adopt at a humane society, humane society or licensed breeder,”
The precedent it sets is the idea that if there are bad actors in an industry, that lawmakers look to make bills and acts that punish the entire industry. Go after the puppy mills that are wholesaling the animals. Make a law so puppies need official papers from breeders. But to cut off an entire legacy industry is reckless.
