Ward 20 candidate wants to ban pet sales in pet stores
Admin2 | Monday, August 9th, 2010 | No Comments »Maher, running for a council seat in Trinity-Spadina (Ward 20), is calling on the city to ban sales of cats and dogs in Toronto pet stores, saying it would “reduce the number of unwanted pets” in the city.
He further charges a pet shop is “not a healthy environment for the (animals) and may result in future behavioural problems.”
Maher will plead his case for a ban – which would take effect a year after a bylaw passes – next Friday, Aug. 13 at Toronto City Council’s licensing and standards committee, which could act on or study the issue.
In a letter to committee chairperson Howard Moscoe, Maher said stopping the store sales would promote responsible pet ownership of puppies and kittens instead of impulse buys “based on their ‘cuteness’ factor.”
The candidate said 11 of the city’s registered pet shops sell dogs and cats. Maher said he visited two stores on the list and asked Toronto Animal Services to investigate conditions there in which dogs were caged.
Stacey Halliday, marketing director for PJ’s Pet Centres, said the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council is talking with the city to see where Maher got his information and whether the industry can do anything to address his concerns.
But in an interview Friday, Aug. 6 she said his allegations certainly did not reflect visits to her company’s stores, where, Halliday said, staff do everything possible to send people home with information they need and a sense of lifelong responsibility toward the animals they purchased.
“Our pets stay with their owners for a very long time and there’s a reason why,” she said, arguing dogs bought through services such as Craiglist or from a neighbour’s litter down the street are more likely to wind up euthanized or abandoned.
Dr. Kenneth Hill, a veterinarian at the Bloor Mill Veterinary Hospital in Etobicoke, supported Maher’s proposal in a letter, saying he previously worked at “several Toronto region pet stores” and, based on his experience, “staff at pet stores are often poorly trained and not equipped to provide prospective owners with sound advice” on selecting the pet best for their household.
Pet owners then become dissatisfied or unable to cope with the animals, which “are then prone to suffer neglect” or be euthanized, wrote Hill, who said he sees pets with serious health or behavioural problem “disproportionately over-represented” in puppies and kittens bought from pet stores.
~ Mike Adler
