After an investigation by the Washington Post exposed that some animal shelters spend thousands of donated dollars to purchase puppies from breeders, then claim that they’re rescues, Utah animal groups are denouncing the practice.
Even if the groups’ goal is to “take the animals out of that situation,” their method “doesn’t make sense,” said Deann Shepard with the Humane Society of Utah.
“It’s not like they’re helping to shut down the breeders,” she said. “It’s not like they’re closing them from business and trying to find alternative means or more humane income.”
In a blogpost, Julie Castle, CEO of Best Friends Animal Society, explained the breeder auctions used to be a way for rescues to provide a “safety net” for old, sick and injured dogs from puppy mills. In 2010, she said, the national manager of puppy mill initiatives for Best Friends attended one of these auctions and was able to get “used up” dogs for pocket change.
“This was legitimate rescue,” Castle wrote. “These dogs were going to be disposed of or, at best, dumped in an overburdened rural pound where they faced almost certain death if not for the intervention of organizations like National Mill Dog Rescue that pioneered this channel of compassionate rescue.”
But over the years, Castle wrote, these compassionate efforts have been turned on their head by “misguided rescuers and outright exploiters” who are paying thousands of dollars to breeders to “rescue” a single dog.
“The end result is that commercial breeders, the overwhelming majority of which are abusive and exploitative, are being given the incentive by so-called rescue groups to ramp up their breeding operations,” she said.
Tracey Kelley, with the No Kill Utah Coalition, said while there’s nothing in the coalition agreement that prohibits the practice of purchasing puppies at breeder auctions, none of the current coalition members do.
“They understand by doing so, they would simply be putting money into puppy mills thereby perpetuating those mills’ breeding practices,” Kelley said.
The NKUT Coalition is a group of Utah rescues and shelters who maintain the standard of “no-kill” status.
The majority of animals coming into shelters like the Humane Society of Utah are being surrendered by their owners. The humane society is the largest open-admission shelter in Utah, meaning it will take any companion animal that is brought in, not just the ones staff members feel they can successfully adopt out.
“That’s the challenge for us,” Sheperd said. “We do maintain no-kill standards, but we’re open admission.”
The other way shelters get animals is through transfers from other shelters.
“If they’re at a risk of euthanasia there because they’re out of space or time or financial resources, they will transfer them to us and we can re-home them from here,” Sheperd said.
Either way, the humane society can provide paperwork for every animal that shows a full history of where it came from and how it ended up at the shelter. Sheperd said that’s one way to make sure a rescue or a shelter is reputable.
“We have total transparency of where they came from, where they went, what their outcome was,” Sheperd said. “We put all of that on our website for up to five years so you can really see how many animals came in from other shelters, other rescues, how many of them were adopted out, returned to owners or to other rescues.”
When it comes to making sure rescues are legitimate and reputable, it’s up to the consumer to make the distinction, since there aren’t any Utah laws that regulate animal rescues other than local animal control regulations. Sheperd recommends researching the rescue or shelter to see how it runs its business.
The same goes for individual breeders who are selling puppies.
“If you are looking online and they promise something that is too good to be true and they ask for money up front, don’t do that,” Sheperd said. “That’s always the scam.”
Potential buyers should always meet the owners or the breeders at their home or shelter, never in a public place.
“If they say they’re going to meet you in the parking lot, you have to wonder why,” she said. “If they invite you out to their home, you can see the living conditions of the parents and of the puppies?”
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/2rdGUuR
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