On Kijiji.com in my area I clicked on dogs, puppies for sale. The first page alone displays 25 ads. Here are 16 of them:
Shih Poo
Jack Russell x Cairn terrier
French bulldog x Pug
Schnoodle
Micro Teacup Poodle
Yorkie pups offered at 6 weeks
Boxers offered at 6 weeks
White boxers offered at 6 weeks
Maltipoo
Maltipoo x Pug
Yorkie poo
Schnauzer / Poodle
Jug
Chorkie
Pom Shi
Shih Chi
So 16/25 of the dogs, or 65% on the main page are from BYBers and mills. Say each advertisement is for 5 puppies. 5 x 16 = 80 dogs available on the first page for pure profit.
I feel very strongly about this because I have a rescue puppy from a mill, but know that people pay good money for these dogs. It’s ignorant for someone to go out and buy one of these puppies without doing background research, but with this over-saturation of mixes and mutts for sale at elevated prices it seems normal to the uninformed buyer.
1) In many areas there are laws that you must keep your household pet up to date with rabies vaccinations. Why aren’t their spay/neuter laws for dogs that cannot be proven as show dogs?
2) How can we make the "uninformed" buyer aware that the cute puppies they are buying are sickly and will end up costing them in the long run? We have a community-like setting on Yahoo answers where most of the users here know about BYBers and puppy mills. Your average joe on the street doesn’t!
3) Why not make selling dogs ILLEGAL unless licensed? Reputable breeders could license themselves by proving that their puppies are health checked, registerd, and the parents have clean bloodlines.
What do you think could be done to make the public more aware of puppy over-population, BYBers, and puppy mills?
I think the only thing that could help is education.
Each one of us has to educate a potential dog owner on a good place to get a dog, just like we do for people here (though it might help to be nice, and use a little less swearing
).
I don’t think the government are going to do anything about it, and even if they did, they’d be ridiculed because the majority of the public don’t believe that animals are important.
Making dogs illegal would be dangerous because a lot of people who have unlicensed dogs (their dog’s "accidental" litter, a puppy from a friend, people who don’t know about laws etc.) might avoid taking their dog to the vet for fear of being caught.
In the end, we have to remember that a large number of the population forget their morals and ethics for the sake of comfort (cheap, nearby BYB with no waiting list). People who hate child labour buy clothes from Primark. People who hate animal abuse eat at McDonalds. It would take a lot to change someone like that.