written by EunJu Seo

Pet abandonment is a huge problem worldwide. There are countless millions of loving, adoptable dogs put to death every year, simply because people keep breeding more puppies to try make money, and other people reward them for this by paying them for these puppies when they could instead save an innocent dog from death by adopting.

The fact is that people who buy puppies from pet shops fund the cruelty of Puppy Farms where the breeding dogs are cruelly abused and inhumanely killed. Some breeders who cannot sell their puppies are notorious for killing those unsold or imperfect puppies using methods such as drowning. Others abandon them.

The law states that in the UK, dogs and cats should not be put to death until they have been at the pound for seven days. In the US it can be just 48 hours. The animals are seldom claimed by their owners, so their only chance of getting out alive are for volunteers to find rescue space for them in time, and for enough volunteers to be found to transport them to the rescue space in time, which could be hundreds of miles away. Therefore, animals are very lucky if a rescue space is found for them, as most rescue space are full to bursting point most of the time. 

Pet abandonment statistics worldwide are thought to be around six hundred million every year and many countries have extremely cruel animal overpopulation controls. Despite these shocking statistics, people continue to encourage breeding by buying puppies from breeders and pet shops instead of adopting. If nobody bought, and everyone adopted, nobody would breed dogs, and eventually no innocent, adoptable dogs would die. It seems that nobody wants to admit responsibility and wants to pass the blame, but those who throw away their pets from the beginning could have thought one more time before abandoning, and could have chosen to adopt instead of buying to minimize the number of dogs that become sacrifice in our hands put to death sooner or later.