I took a call in the shop yesterday that reminds me how much educating we still have to do.
It was a young woman asking if we sell puppies or kittens. I told her no, then offered to help her find the right pet. I was a little surprised she didn’t even know if she wanted a dog or a cat, but I try to keep an open mind.
She asked me if $199 was too much for a kitten. Her parents said that it was too much – kittens shouldn’t cost much. And she asked me how much a Golden Retriever would be, and seemed rather aghast when I said I didn’t know, but several hundred dollars, at least.
And I tried to explain why a purebred, healthy puppy is worth a significant investment. I explained that good, responsible breeders do health testing on their dogs, research the best, healthiest lines to breed with, feed high-quality food, give their animals the best veterinary care, and incur expenses up the wazoo to insure the health and safety of both dam and puppies.
And I told her that people unwilling or unable to spend the dollars necessary to acquire a pet probably shouldn’t – the initial cost is just the first in a long line of dollar signs fleeing out of animal owners’ wallets. Pets aren’t cheap. They’re worth every penny – but they’re definitely not cheap.
To be perfectly honest, I sort of expected her to hang up on me part way through my lecture – but she hung in there. She even seemed to be listening – and said she’d talk to her parents about what I said. I’m not hopeful, but maybe it made a little difference, in one person, for one day.
Puppy mills and their pet shop outlets do a wonderful job of marketing and playing on the “awwww” factor. Those of us who know better, who know that dogs are not a money-making crop, but a life-long commitment of caring, can’t seem to compete with the advertising savvy of the millers who exploit, mistreat, and abuse. But we can, one phone call at a time, try to make a difference.
Sometimes I think that “everyone knows” that puppy mills are evil – just because I’m so firmly entrenched in the dog subculture. Everyone I know probably does know. But all of us who do have to make an effort to tell those who don’t – the “pet people,” the “real people” who are the ones who may be tempted to ask “How much is that puppy in the window?”
