“Compassion is the radicalism of our time.”-Dalai Lama
In the past I have been guilty of buying animals as pets instead of adopting them. However, I am now changing that. I recently read something that really reminded me of why I am vegan – because I love animals. It said that when you are buying pets, you are buying lives. All too often speciesism gives us the idea that we have the right to buy an animal’s life. When most of us buy a pet we are not thinking about buying a life, we are simply thinking about buying a belonging. To live a vegan and cruelty-free lifestyle we have to know that buying an animal is buying a life.
Puppy mills are only concerned with profit. There is either no to minimum concern about the welfare of the animals. These places are truly heartless and barbaric. There is no attention given to puppies born with serious social, behavioral, and health issues. The dogs whose sole purpose are to breed are starved, deserted, and abandoned sick and injured without needed medical attention for the overwhelming pain that they are in.
It means literally nothing that commercial breeders are licensed by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). The majority of licensed breeders, of which there are about 3,300 of, have horrific violations that are left untreated. This leads to the unnecessary suffering the animals go through before they die. The USDA focuses on trying to track unlicensed breeders that use newspaper advertisements and the internet to sell their animals. Due to the astounding number of unlicensed breeders that exist, the USDA can not focus on the problems located in licensed facilities. If you want to learn more and/or end the horrific atrocities being committed please visit http://www.thepuppymillproject.org/what-we-do/.
Puppy mills and breeders are horrendous, and when we buy from them we are supporting their evil ways. However, because breeders and puppy mills animals are out there, the animals need a loving home. The best way to not support these organizations is to adopt animals that were given away or abandoned. By doing this you are accomplishing many things: you are not supporting puppy mills or breeders, you are not buying a life, you are taking an animal out of a horrid situation and placing them in a home where they will be loved. By adopting an animal you are giving them a second chance– something that every living being deserves. I urge you to adopt animals and please not buy them.
If you are able to, please adopt from a no-kill shelter. Sadly, even though places can have this title it does not mean that animals are not killed there. The threshold of not putting animals down is at 90%. That means that even in a no-kill shelter 10% of the animals there are still murdered. To adopt from a place that completely abstains from killing animals, it will require some digging into the fine details of a humane society’s operation. However, once you have done the work and gotten that precious life, you have given them a second chance and they are grateful. You will have found yourself a new member of your family that deserves a life full of love and compassion.
I understand that one would want to support no kill shelters, but what about the animals that would otherwise be put down if they are not adopted? Wouldn’t those animals in the no kill shelters have more time than those at the kill shelters?
Good article. I agree with Jessica, though. There are so many high-kill shelters out there. They can be difficult to visit, emotionally-speaking, but adopting from one of these shelters saves lives! No-kill is great but, unfortunately, it’s not the norm. By adopting from a high-kill shelter, one can help advance the no-kill movement.