Bodlover - No Pet Stores in Great Britain

I was in the health forum where a new member was posting about her kitten she got from a pet store. Well, I saw your post saying that it's illegal there to sell pets at stores. So that means you all don't have pet stores, just pet supply stores? If so I think that is absolutely wonderful that the government would do that! So you can only get them from breaders, or shelters, or newspaper adds like you said? This is wonderful!!!!!! I wish we could get that done over here in the states. If so, the puppy & kitty mills would be put out of business here in the states. The mills could try all they wanted to advertises their kitties & puppies in the papers, but once people respond and came out they would be disgusted. Which would lead to more media coverage and them getting shutting down!!! Are there puppy & kitty mills there even with this law?

Hiya Sfell... Yep thats right... only breeders/rescues or ad's.... I think there have been only a very few puppy/kitten mills here - and they soon gave up. It's a great thing it really is!! Sorry this is so short, Im just about to leave work!! I'll get back to this tomorrow!!

I didn't realize that...I would hope that we could put that into practice here too! Very coooool!

It's almost the same in my country. Some smaller animals may be sold in pet stores, like birds or guinea-pigs and such, but no cats or dogs. I look forward to the day when NO animal can be sold in stores, since picking up a phone and calling the person selling the animals will be a bit of trouble and requires a little thought at least, and you can't be taken in by that cute little guinea-pig sitting in his cage in that pet store. Thankfully there are not that many pet stores around as it is, most are pet supply stores.

When I was a very young child, I used to like looking through my mother's mail order catalogs. One of the major store chains, (I think it was Montgomery Wards), actually had dogs in their big catalogs that you could order just like they were merchandise. These were supposed to be purebred animals, that were guaranteed to be healthy and arrive alive.

I was too young to know about things like puppy mills, but I still couldn't understand why anyone would want to use a method like that to buy an animal! Hopefully, they didn't do this for very long.

Yup, I lived in Britain for a while and they have a much more caring view of animals. Here in NA we see pets too often as "accessories" instead of best friend/companions that deserve to be treated with the same dignity as humans. I only once resorted to getting a kitten from a store, I couldn't for the life of me find one in time for Christmas for my brother (he wanted a black and white bicolour in the worst way because he missed Mitzi our childhood kitty so much), but then I was determined to buy it from a reputable "mom and pop" operation. Otherwise Mitzi, my first cat, came directly from a friend's cat's litter, my canary Pepi I adopted directly from a breeder and aviary and Sophie came from the SPCA.

I don't think stores should be allowed to sell pets at all. I walked into to Petcetera recently, that's our big PetMart chain here in Canada, for supplies recently and was apalled to see they had a separate room for "adoptions"; it was aweful, no natural light in there just flueroscent and little or no contact with caring individuals. I've also noticed a marked difference in behaviour between my brother's cat and mine. I think Roxy was weaned from her mother far too early and traumatized by the whole petstore experience because she suffers alot of anxieties whereas you can tell Sophie was taken good care of by loving volunteers at the SPCA because she's so outgoing and affectionate.

I wonder which level of government we need to lobby in order to have something done about this?

Hi!! Im back now.... anyway.... its like Eeva said here too, there are no cats and dogs to be sold in pet stores, but you do still get guina pigs and rabbits and hamsters in a few shops - usually only the larger ones though, generally most pet stores here are just for supplies..... I have bought hamsters from stores before - because thats about the only place you can get them...they never have any in the rescue centres or papers. But I have to say, recently the conditions the animals are kept in have improved, the guinea pigs and rabbits now have much larger longer cages with stuff to do in them and enough space to run around and exercise, I know this doesn't make it right, but if they are going to have live in a pet store at least its in reasonable conditions now. The only thing here that still bothers me are the big chicken factories... they are disgracefull and the poor chickens are kept in filthy cramped conditions.

As for who to contact to stop this, I don't know about in the US but here we would probably first contact our local MP, and the proper animal authorities... you could try contacting the SPCA (here its the RSPCA) and asking them where to start.