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Why You Should Adopt A Pet Instead Of Buying From A Breeder

Why Pet adoption is better than buying
By adopting a pet you not only rescue them from a grim fate, you also get a grateful companion that will love you as long as it lives.

Although breeders can provide you with a family pet, perhaps you should think about adoption instead. After all, an estimated 4 million cats and dogs are euthanized each year in the United States because too many people give up their pets and not enough people adopt from an animal shelter.

Sadly, shelters only have a limited amount of space and are forced to make the tough decision to put down an ‘unwanted’ pet. If we adopt pets instead of buying them from a breeder, we can reduce the number of animals euthanized and give them a warm and loving home instead. Below, we look at more reasons to adopt instead of paying for a pet from a breeder.

Gratitude

This will probably sound very strange to a non-animal lover but adopted animals tend to be more loving than one bought from a breeder. Many people who have bought pets from breeders and from shelters say that the ‘rescued’ animal acts more affectionately towards its master. This could be because of a ‘sixth sense’ of knowing you saved them or else they know their life is much better now than in the past. Either way, it feels wonderful.

You Will Save Money

When you look for an animal from a pet breeder, you can be sure that you’ll be forced to pay top dollar. While the shelter also charges a fee (it needs money to stay open you know!), the cost is far lower. Additionally, you will be buying a pet that is healthy and well looked after as they tend to have been spayed/neutered and vaccinated by the shelter. As any pet owner will tell you, this can be an expensive process so you have saved time and money almost immediately.

No Support For Puppy/Kitten Mills

There are breeding facilities that are little more than puppy or kitten mills where the goal is to churn out as many pets as possible. The parents of the puppies/kittens are kept in cages with their sole purpose being to breed new pets. They are kept in terrible conditions and so are their newborns. Once a breeding dog has served its purpose, it is killed, auctioned or abandoned. Many of the puppies and kittens produced at these mills will have hidden medical problems that don’t become apparent until later on. By then, it may be too late to save them and treatment could cost a small fortune. Few people are aware of such places and don’t know that by buying a puppy or kitten from a pet store, they are unwittingly supporting the cruel industry.

When you adopt a pet, you will be rescuing them from a grim fate, you will not be supporting mills and you will receive a grateful pet that will love you for as long as it lives.

Image license: iStockphoto (view source)