This Tuesday, January 13 at 5 PM there will be a Citizen’s Forum about banning retail pet sales in Tacoma at the Tacoma City Council’s weekly meeting.
The Council has Citizen’s Forums on the second Tuesday of every month. After the Council finishes the business on its agenda, it opens up the meeting to citizens who can bring up issues for the Council to consider. Each person is allowed 3 minutes to speak.
Tacoma resident Jessica Warner is the person behind the proposal. She started fostering puppies for Motley Zoo Animal Rescue in Redmond last October. She decided to make the proposal at the meeting after seeing puppies in the window of a pet store called Pets and Pals whenever she walks by.
Image from City Council Citizens Forum- Ban on Retail Pet Sales in Tacoma Facebook Page.
It’s widely known that the some pet stores that sell puppies get them from puppy mills, which are defined by the ASPCA as:
“a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs. Unlike responsible breeders, who place the utmost importance on producing the healthiest puppies possible, breeding at puppy mills is performed without consideration of genetic quality. This results in generations of dogs with unchecked hereditary defects.”
Recently, someone went into Pets and Pals and asked if they was any paperwork on the puppies they were selling. The person in the store told them that the puppies didn’t have paperwork because they came from “people in the community”.
That’s odd. Considering they were selling 2 English Bulldog puppies for $1799 each, you’d think they’d have paperwork showing where they got them.
They also had a couple of Shiba Inu puppies and a Yorkshire Terrier puppy with a sign that said “Purebred – No Papers.”
While I’m not saying their puppies came from a puppy mill-type environment, the fact that they are selling purebred puppies with no papers certainly raises a red flag. Responsible breeders provide papers with the puppies they sell.
Ms. Warner says she isn’t trying to shut the pet store down – she just wants them to stop selling puppies.
Dozens of cities and jurisdictions have passed retail pet bans in the last 10-15 years, including San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, El Paso, Miami Beach, and Chicago.
For more information about the City Council meeting in Tacoma next Tuesday, go to the Ban on Retail Pet Sales in Tacoma Facebook page. The meeting will be held at the Tacoma Municipal Building, 747 Market St., 98402.
Thank you DogSpot for this great write up!