No more doggies in the window?
Timothy P. Carney
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The puppy in the pet store window is a classic image of Main Street America, but it may soon be legislated out of business.
As of Oct. 1, it is illegal for a pet store in Aurora, Colorado, to sell dogs except those that come directly from animal rescue operations. Aurora is the 13th city in Colorado to pass such a law, and hundreds of other cities, counties, and states have taken the same step thanks to a lobbying blitz by the Humane Society and other animal welfare organizations.
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California banned pet store sales of dogs and cats in 2019, followed by Maryland in 2020. In other parts of the country, like Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., the bans extend to all sorts of mammals, including bunny rabbits and even pigs. In some places, pet stores aren’t allowed to sell much more than fish.
The most obvious argument for such laws is that pet stores simply don’t have the room or the resources to properly care for dogs and cats — or, obviously, pigs.
But that is only the secondary motivation for the lobbyists behind such laws. The main goal is to shut down the “puppy mills.”
Breeding dogs is big business, and as with anything modern man wants, there’s a market for a mass-produced version. The early life of mass-produced puppies can be nearly as dreadful and inhumane as the life of a factory farm chicken. While many of the crusaders against puppy mills and pet shop puppies oppose all pet ownership, others are trying to drive dog wanters toward adopting rescue dogs or dealing with ethical breeders.
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Regulating breeders is hard, thus the campaign to ban retail puppies — cut off the puppy mills by choking off the distribution channels. The demand for puppies isn’t going to drop, though, especially with so many millennials forgoing the whole procreation thing, thus needing to fulfill their need to care with other mammals.
Maybe banning retail cats and dogs will work in ways the war on drugs, alcohol, and prostitution has failed. Maybe, though, it will drive dog breeding into darker, less regulated, less humane corners.