Today, a coworker and I went to ask people outside of Puppies 'N Love a few questions. The questions were:
1. What did you think of the puppies? (a warm-up question - most common answer was "they're cute")
2. What did you think of the cages? (Most people answered "too small", only one guy mentioned the floor, two people thought it was okay, one answered "comfy")
3. Did the prices of the dogs surprise you? (most common answer was "I don't know" - they don't display the prices, you have to ask)
4. Did you know that Macerich, the company who manages this mall, will no longer allow pet stores that sell pets? (Should've been phrased better - most people answered "I didn't know that", a few people said "good", and about two people said "aw, that's too bad".
We did a lot better than I thought we were going to. We surveyed about sixteen people - we thought we were going to get about five! Most people took the flyer we made, which was this: (WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SAD INFORMATION. PG)
Puppies
‘N Love gets most of their dogs from Hunte Corporation (their corporate
office told us this when we asked - 602-255-0166). Hunte Corp. sells
90,000 puppies per year from their 20,000 square foot block building,
filled with 8-week-old puppies ready to be shipped around the country.
Under
the United States Department of Agriculture Animal Welfare Act you
could have 300 dogs stacked in cages for their entire lives. The
regulation only requires that they have food, water, and space to turn
around and lie down. There are 100 inspectors to monitor 10,000
facilities.
The
Humane Society of the United States says that “almost all pet store
puppies come from puppy mills”. They did a nine-month investigation,
charging the Hunte Corporation and Petland for selling puppies with
life-threatening genetic defects and highly contagious parasitic and
viral infections.
How can I get a good dog if I shouldn’t buy one from a pet store?
There
are a lot of shelters and pet stores that get dogs from shelters that
have wonderful dogs that are waiting to be adopted. If you are looking
for a purebred, there are plenty at local shelters - sometimes as many
as 25% of dogs in shelters.
If
you’re looking for a dog, check out your local animal shelter, or go
online to Petfinder.com or theshelterpetproject.org to find a dog who is
waiting for you.
And
finally, don’t forget to visit stores like PetMatch over at [xyz] mall. They sell pet toys and treats and only adopt out shelter dogs.
If
you’d like to check our sources, ask any questions, or tell us about
your pet (or anything else!) e-mail at tinycages2@gmail.com. Thank you
very much for reading this!
_____________________
That was it. I may have said "shelter" too many times . . . oops.
We're planning on perhaps doing it again, but this time handing out flyers (we'll maybe make some nicer ones for children) inside. That's what my coworker wanted to do, at least. Well, I'll be honest, he did most of the work. It'll be a while before I recover enough to want to interact with human beings after learning more about Hunte Corp. and puppy mills! Haha. :)
We're not sure what our next plan of attack should be, besides conducting another survey. Perhaps I should put up some more friendly flyers around my neighborhood. The last time I did something like that, they got taken down - but it's worth a shot, I suppose. If you have any advice, please let me know, by e-mail (to the right of the page) or in a comment.
Thanks! :)
Thanks! :)
