Pet Stores - One of my daughter’s favorite things to do is walk through the aisle of various creatures in pet stores. She absolutely loves the aquariums the best, squealing at all of the brightly colored fish swimming around happily. The joys of being a preschooler completely take over. I’ve gotten most of my small animals throughout my lifetime in pet stores. Numerous hamsters have come and gone in my life, a few rabbits and even a guinea pig or two have won over my heart. I’ll never forget when our mall’s pet store announced that it was going out of business. Rumor had it that it was closing up because it treated the animals inhumanely and the conditions were not very clean. I was only ten years old, and I was devastated. That’s how my parents used to get me to happily agree to take a trip to the mall. They’d promise me that I could spend some time communicating with the animals.
Now that I’m an adult and taking my own daughter to pet stores, I can’t say that they are thrilling to me. I don’t mind seeing the small animals in cages, as that’s the conditions that they are accustomed to. I do absolutely hate to see the puppies and kittens staring out at the onlookers with sad and begging eyes. The cages that they are usually kept in leave little to be desired. There aren’t blankets and comfy beds for them to enjoy. They have to sleep on the hard metal bottoms that their little paws fall through. I hate seeing that. It makes me want to adopt all of them just to rescue them from their tiny spaces that they are trapped inside of.
Even though the pet stores claim that their dogs or cats are purebred, you have to wonder. The price tags of the animals definitely display that they are purebred, but how many times is that faked I can’t even venture a guess. I have had several purebred cats and dogs in my lifetime and I would never dream of purchasing them from a pet store. Purebred animals, in my opinion, should be purchased from the direct breeder. Any knowledgeable pet owner would know that you want to see the parents of the puppy or kitten along with the environment that they spent their first days living in. Buying animals in pet stores doesn’t allow you to have any of that background information which could end up leaving you with a complete disaster.
My thought on pet stores is only that they should be for purchasing small animals, reptiles, fish and supplies. Pet food is always a safe bet, along with toys and cages too. I just don’t believe that pet stores should be selling cats and dogs unless they are willing to provide much more comfortable housing for them until they find a new family.
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