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So a few years ago I attained a position at Pets Unlimited. Initially I was very excited about my “cool” new job. I got to pet puppies and take care of fish tanks for a living. What could be bad about that? I would eventually realize I was working for a place I did not at all agree with.

The store I worked at had four “large” kennels and three small ones to the right of those. The bigger ones were around 4 feet wide, 3 feet high, and 3 feet deep. They were hardly what I would consider spacious. The bigger ones were obviously intended to be where the pups were kept, and the smaller ones were for kittens, chinchillas and other small animals. Too bad it couldn’t stay that way.

Eventually my manager, who I considered a friend, decided he had to leave. He was not a big fan of many of the people above him, and for good reason. Five or six months went by without any actual management and then came the idiot.

He was a completely inexperienced manager and you could even say he was irresponsible. There is one thing that kept him in that store, and he is still there to this day. It was sales… money money money. He didn’t think of the small kennels as small animal homes, he decided he’d just put smaller dogs in them. These small kennels had the same footprint as the large ones, but only about 16 inches of head room.

As far as product sales within the store went, they had not changed from one manager to the next. The difference in sales came from the high increase in puppy sales. While I worked there I saw as many as 17 puppies stuffed into 4 small kennels, and 3 even smaller ones. Sometimes there were as many as 4 small dogs to a kennel if there was a litter of kittens or two taking up the smaller ones.

This manager received a bonus on his pay every week that he exceeded the sales of that same week in the year previous. Call it incentive to be an inhumane ass. He received plenty of those bonuses while I was a trapped employee there.

I use the term “trapped” because I was. It was not the money, I could find a minimum wage job in a day… it was the animals. I felt I had to stay because they needed me there. The manager was not going to care for them. A few times he went in on Sundays when the store was closed and I would open on Monday. I’m certain now and then we would just not even bother coming in. The pups would be covered in their own feces because there shredded paper was not cleaned out, and there food and water would be upside down and empty. Needless to say, I was disgusted.

Might as well get into the puppy mill part of things. Did you know that about twice a week the livestock manager for every district gets a fax of puppy availability? This is not a tiny list either. If these dogs where coming from a reputable breeder, there would not be 35 pugs available, and all at 7 weeks of age. These dogs come primarily from filthy puppy farms. Most are based in Quebec it seemed. From what I here the laws against mills there are nowhere near as strict as they are in other provinces.

I once asked if I would be able to visit some of these places and see what they are all about. I was given one address. Of course, this was for a breeder in New Brunswick named Joan. No employee was permitted to visit, or even know the location of the farms in Quebec. Proof enough for me that there are not up to standard, whatever that is.

The pups regularly arrived at Pets Unlimited sick. Employees were way too commonly feeding the pups medication. Normally it was coccidia and kennel cough, which were bad, but not the worst things I saw. Every now and then Parvo came into the mix. A couple pups did die of it while I was there. Another regular that we usually heard about after the sale of a golden lab or retriever was hip dysplasia. A few pups had to be put down by the owners because they could not afford the 6 thousand dollar surgery to fix the problem. One breeder was shut down for knowingly selling pups with dysplasia not long before I quit, but I am sure it still comes up.

If these ailments are not enough to stop you from looking to a pet store for a puppy, then maybe knowing what they pay vs. what you pay. Golden retrievers or labs only cost the store 300 to 340 dollars, and they could sell it to you the next day for $899.99. Little trendy dogs like poms and poodles were bought around the 500 dollar mark, and sold for up to $1600.

Still not enough? How about the fact that they are shipped in bunches by plane. They show up at the stores completely terrified and they often can’t muster up the courage to come out of the crate on their own. Eventually they fall in love with all of the employees, but for the first few days they are trying to shake off the fact that they just endured a horrible bumpy ride on a plane at only eight weeks of age. They arrived in New Brunswick or Halifax covered in fleas and other parasites and were rid of those before they arrived at the stores that same day. I know this because I saw a station wagon full of dogs that had not been to the vet yet one time. I was told to come out with a spray bottle full of cold water but I did not know what for. It turns out the air conditioning in the car was busted and she (the livestock manager) needed to spray down the dogs since it was over 30 degrees outside. We all know how hot a car gets in the sun.

Quite often a puppy would not sell in it’s “prime” for whatever reason (usually price) and stay at the store for an extended period of time. Stays as long as 4 or 5 months became all too common. Someone that cared would have given it away by then, but pet stores don’t tend to care. There was also a cycle that helped reduce the chance that pup would ever get to leave.

New puppies… constantly. Every single week. Smaller, cuter, younger puppies. Which is of course what the consumer wants. So 15 dogs are sold before that one overgrown dog finally finds an owner that is willing to dish out the money for it. I’ve seen an Australian Sheppard become a 45 lb dog in a 4 by 3 cube. This does not need to happen.

Dogs are people too, and there are countless puppies and dogs looking for a home right now. Breeders should stop what they are doing. For now, there are enough dogs in this world. Animal shelters are loaded with “muts” that are in need of someone to care for them. There is no need to pay a thousand dollars or more when you should be paying a 90 dollar adoption fee. Do the right thing and stop supporting puppy mills.

-Mr. SoVeg

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