Once in a while, you hear something that makes so much sense you wonder why nobody thought of it before. That’s certainly the case with a story in the news last week about the Toronto city council, which voted unanimously Sept. 21 to ban the sale of dogs and cats at pet shops unless they come from animal shelters, rescue groups or people who gave up the animals for free.
The vote was a shot across the bow of puppy mills, which supply most of the animals sold in pet shops, and have a well-deserved reputation for breeding and raising the dogs and cats in cruel conditions. Kept in cages, they’re not exercised, or socialized, and they often have debilitating health and behavioral problems.
The Toronto law is a modification of other similar efforts in Canada aimed at the puppy mill problem, like the law passed in Richmond, British Columbia, last October that made that community the first in the country to ban all puppy and cat sales at pet stores.
Glenn De Baeremaeker, the councilor who introduced the motion in Toronto, said, “It really slams the door closed on people who mass produce animals for profit.” He said it should help stop the sale of the animals at flea markets as well.
Needless to say, animal rights groups in Canada and the U.S. will be watching what happens as a result of the Toronto law, and if it works, we can expect to see variations of it in this country in the near future. Those laws will be challenged in the courts, of course, but if they’re upheld, there might be a lot of puppy mill owners in Lancaster County, Pa., looking for new jobs. And that would be a very good thing.
Naturally, there are lots of wrinkles to be ironed out. Pet stores would likely take the youngest and most attractive animals for sale, which would leave behind older dogs and dogs that are difficult, if not impossible to adopt — like the thousands of pit bulls languishing in shelters across the country. But perhaps the laws could require pet shop owners to take a percentage of older animals as well. Also, there’d have to be a way to make sure shelters, humane societies and rescue groups are adequately compensated from the sales to continue their important work.
The last time we adopted a dog from a local rescue organization — a young Jack Russell pulled from a kill facility in Arkansas on his last day — it seems the fees for the adoption came to around $300. It was money well spent, in large part because we knew it would go to saving the next round of dogs from being killed with inhumane methods. I don’t mean to trouble readers unnecessarily, but we were told that in the part of Arkansas our little guy came from, the dogs aren’t killed by lethal injection; they’re simply put in the back of a closed dump truck with a hose coming from the exhaust. It’s horrible, and unsettling, but that’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with, folks.
If pet shops added their own profit margin onto standard rescue organization fees, it might make getting a dog or cat from a pet shop an expensive proposition — but I don’t think people looking to adopt would begrudge it. I can honestly say that we would have paid ten times the fee for our rescue dogs, and considered it money well spent. They’ve enriched our lives that much.
So good job, Toronto. Let’s hope you’ve started a trend. Several months ago, I wrote about some volunteer work I’d been doing for Sylvia’s Children, a charitable organization run by Holmdel businesswoman Sylvia Allen, the founder and owner of Allen Consulting Inc. Sylvia’s Children provides financial and other support for 1,000 impoverished youngsters (200 of them live on-site) at the Mbiriizi School in Uganda.
On some visits to Uganda, representatives of Sylvia’s Children have helped with building and infrastructure projects, like digging a well so that the students will have clean water, planted gardens so they’ll have more food and carried donated musical instruments. Working with volunteer health care professionals, Sylvia’s Children has provided health exams for all 1,000 kids. They also provided dental exams for many of the students.
This is a labor of love for Allen, who’s nothing short of a dynamo when it comes to lining up sponsors for the students, doctors and nurses for the health clinics, and donors for other projects large and small. But even she wasn’t prepared for the generosity of The Hynes family, New Jersey philanthropists who recently donated $100,000 to Sylvia’s Children for the purchase of a new bus and the building of a clinic at the school.
Said Allen: “With the receipt of this money, we have the bus, and now can expand the knowledge of our students (they have never seen a zebra and yet there is a herd only 50 miles away!). What we so often forget is that the mode of transportation is foot, bike if you are lucky, taxi (using the term loosely … 20 in a van!) or a boda boda (which is a moped). Other than feet and bike, this all costs money in a country where the majority of the population lives on $2 a day. We can also rent the bus out for other school outings, church outings, weddings, engagement parties … the opportunities are endless.”
The money for the clinic is also a blessing. “With the clinic, we can definitely serve our students (which cuts down on the medical expenses we have been incurring by having to take the children to a clinic 40 miles away),” she said. “With this one donation we have taken a giant step forward toward our goal of making the school totally self-reliant and independent.”
If news like that doesn’t put a smile on your face, nothing will.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].