Condemned To Death By Mass Breeding

 http://hopedogrescue.blogspot.sg/2012/08/condemned-to-death-by-mass-breeding.html

 

31.8.12

Condemned To Death By Mass Breeding

I would like to share an incident which recently happened to me. I bought a Chihuahua puppy about a week ago from Pet Movers at Pasir Ris Farmway. I bought the Chihuahua when he was about 2+ months old. Initially when we brought the puppy home, he was quite healthy and was able to run around like a normal puppy. However, on the third day, the puppy started having a loss of appetite, then he went into seizures and I immediately rushed him to the vet. On the way to the vet, I called Pet Movers to ask them to recommend me a vet as this was my first dog, although I have had cats previously.  They recommended me to bring it to AMK Veterinary Clinic as it the same vet that they had taken the puppy for his vaccinations.

The sick Chihuahua puppy

When I brought it there, the vet did some examinations and by this time, my poor puppy was very weak. The vet did a blood test and said that the puppy’s glucose level was very low and they injected glucose into him. After a while, the puppy was able to walk but was still terribly weak and was trembling as he walked. The vet then showed me the blood test results and said that the white blood cell count was high, and he concluded saying that the puppy had a lung infection. Lung infections can lead to pneumonia and water in the lungs, my poor tiny puppy could die from that! For the puppy’s well-being, I decided to ward him at the hospital to ensure he received the necessary medical treatments.

The next day I decided to bring my puppy home. When he got home, he was still able to walk and was running around but still not eating normally. However, the puppy's health suddenly deteriorated the next day. He started having seizures in the morning when we wanted to feed him his medicine. We quickly rushed him to the vet. The vet immediately again injected glucose into the puppy and the puppy was awake again. The puppy was picky with his food and would only eat fresh meat. The vet then told us that we could inject glucose and saline into the puppy ourselves so we brought him home once again. 

At first it was easy to inject the glucose into the puppy’s arm as the vet had left a needle in, and the puppy was ok with it. However, the next day when we wanted to inject, it became more difficult, and the puppy’s arm swelled badly. He was grossly underweight by then, with all this unseen health issues that he came with when we bought him from Pet Movers. We quickly brought him to the vet again, for the third time in a week! This time we visited another vet, Mount Pleasant Medical, which was beside the other vet we visited. The vet at Mount Pleasant said that the puppy was coughing very badly, and when I told her that the white blood cell count was very high she concluded that the puppy was possibly unwell even before we bought it. At that moment of time I was having mixed feelings. My heart was aching to see my newly bought puppy being so sick and we had to keep visiting the vet, not to mention spending so much money on vet bills, the unnecessary stress and emotional worry, and I was also angry with the pet shop that sold us a sick, unhealthy puppy. How can they do that to unsuspecting pet owners? Who is the governing body for all these pet shops that are selling sick, unhealthy pets to owners and why is nothing done to monitor or stop this? I am very sure I am not the first pet owner to go through this, neither will I be the last, so why is this sub-standard still allowed to go on?

After we left the vet, we quickly rushed down to the pet shop to demand for an explanation. We argued with the pet shop for about half an hour, all this while the puppy was sleeping in my arms. This would tell you how weak and unwell the puppy was, to sleep soundly throughout the entire commotion. The pet shop then promised us that the vet would send them the medical report on my puppy, first thing in the morning. Pet Movers said if the medical report was very bad, they would do a one to one exchange for us. What do they mean by “very bad”? They sold me a very sick puppy who is having seizures at 2 months old, loss of appetite and lung infection, you don’t even need a medical report to see that this is already very bad!

Anyway I waited till morning and when I saw my puppy, he was biting the syringe that was attached to his hand, and it was bleeding. Again we rushed him to another vet. When the vet saw my puppy in the state of health that he was in and just by reading the medical report, the vet concluded that even when we bought the puppy, the puppy was alreadyVERY SICK! The vet suggested that we could do a few tests, like x-ray, blood tests and all, which would add up to about $500, however the tests will or will not show what is wrong with my puppy. So it’s a 50 percent chance of finding out what is wrong with my puppy. I would not mind spending all the money, however I just started working, and with all the expenses of having just paid so much to buy the puppy, and all the many vet bills, I would not be able to cough up such an amount of money for more medical bills. For the past few visits to the vet, medical bills already added up to about $400+. So we decided to call up the pet shop and tell them that we would like to do one for one exchange.

However when we called the pet shop, the staff kept saying that the person in charge was busy and could not come to the phone. We called many times and was very upset that he actually promised us that he would be in the office the whole day and we could call him and look for him. But he did not keep his promise. We called at least 5 times but all 5 times he was said to be busy. We ended up calling AVA and reporting this issue. After calling AVA, we called the pet shop to extend their opening hours for us to see the dogs and to do the exchange and they agreed.

To date, we have yet to hear from AVA.

While we were choosing another puppy, I looked at my poor Chihuahua, he was lying down in a basket, no life and no more energy to even move. When I lifted his head, he quickly hid his head under his hand. I really did not want him to go back to the pet shop. Who knows what the pet shop will do to him. I was really heartbroken to be giving up my dear Chihuahua to the pet shop, I cried the whole entire night. Even though the pet shop agreed to the exchange, I would really love to have my Chihuahua back. The pet shop then also promised that they can heal the puppy back to health. I really hope they can keep their promise and not just make empty promises. I am really upset with the pet shop for selling unhealthy puppies to people like me. Whenever we buy a puppy we would want the puppy to be healthy and be running around and not keep visiting the vet all day. We are all working adults and really cannot afford so much time off just to take a newly bought puppy to keep visiting the vet. I would like to take this opportunity to warn people not to buy puppies or even dogs from Pet Movers, as the living condition there is very bad. Even though they sell cheaper dogs and puppies but their health might not be very good and may end up visiting the vet like me.

I called Pet Movers a few days later to ask how the sick puppy was and if they would give it to me, as I had found a sponsor for his vet bills. They replied that I was not entitled to ask any more questions on the returned puppy.

Story and photographs by Heng Mui Na.

Disclaimer: HOPE Dog Rescue bears no responsibility for the contents of the above post. We received this from a pet buyer and have her permission to share her views on this post. HOPE does NOT support the buying of pets.

Note from Fiona: It is difficult to resist that adorable puppy in the window, but you may be paying a lot of money for a dog you know nothing about. Very often these pet shop puppies develop health issues, either almost immediately after purchase, or later in life because usually genetic issues are passed down from parents to puppies and your cute little puppy will soon cost you a lot of money to remedy. Imagine generation after generation of flawed and defective genes.

Do you know who your puppy's parents are?

What’s the big deal if the puppies come with pedigree certs? Pedigree just means a piece of paper with names on it. It might just mean you’re paying more for the same set of health issues! Can the pet shop tell you how old your puppy’s grandparents lived till and what they died from? They probably don’t know any more than you do!

Do your puppy's parent look like this? Is he living a life of breeding hell because you are supporting the puppy trade?

Some pet shops offer a one for one exchange but their guarantees may be bad as their reputation. A replacement puppy might not necessarily be healthier too and it is highly possible that they would have euthanized the sick puppy you returned because it is much cheaper to put it down than to take it to the vet. We heard that another common sales tactic is to blame you for not having taken good care of the puppy, or to tell you it will outgrow its health issue.

Why do you want to support puppy mills?

Puppy mill dogs

We believe almost all puppies that are sold in pet shops come from puppy mills. What this means is mass produced puppies with money as the prime motive. These breeding dogs are often kept in extremely poor conditions and are sometimes malnourished. Females are generally bred every heat cycle from the time they are mere puppies themselves, until they are worn out and then they are often sentenced to death.

The horror of puppy mills is encouraged every time a puppy is bought from a pet shop.

A pet shop usually never hears about their puppies once they leave the shop, and they really don't care. Once you take the puppy home, the pet shop doesn’t care if you lose your puppy, breed it continually or if it dies of liver failure at two years old. They won’t spare a thought for the “product’s” welfare.

So please, ADOPT and NOT SHOP.

Photographs courtesy of Davis KK.