Buying Puppy From Pet Store

Buying a Purebred Puppy From a Pet Store

Pros:

Fast and Easy - This is probably the fastest and easiest way to buy a puppy. No planning ahead and making appointments necessary. You basically walk into a pet store, pick out the puppy you want, and the store clerk will be happy to take your money and send you on your way. Unfortunately, this is the only real pro as far as purchasing from a pet store goes.
Health Guarantee - Store policies will vary, but most reputable pet stores will offer a health guarantee where you can bring the puppy back for either a refund or an exchange if your veterinarian finds certain serious genetic health problems with the puppy. This seems good on the surface, and we suppose it's better than not being offered the health guarantee at all. However, the reality is that as soon as you bring that puppy home, especially if there are children in the family, you will become hopelessly attached to the puppy, and will not return the puppy to the pet store (which would mean a death sentence for the puppy since they can't sell it to anyone else). Most pet store health guarantees will not pay for the vet bills and allow you to keep your puppy. You should also be warned that the vet bills will most likely be much higher than what you paid for the puppy in the first place.

Cons:

Breed Selection - Most pet stores only have enough space to stock a few of the popular breeds, so if they don't have the breed you're looking for, you're out of luck.
Impulse Buying - Pet stores encourage buying on impulse, which is exactly the opposite of what we try to do here. After doing your homework and spending many hours to finally decide on the perfect breed for you, you arrive at a pet store looking for that perfect puppy. But once you're there, you'll see all the other cute puppies in the window, and might end up leaving with a different breed than you intended to get. Puppies are live, fuzzy little things with feelings, and many people will break down when they see that puppy in the next cage stare up at them with those big brown eyes. The salesperson at the pet store might also try to sway you toward a particular puppy they're trying to get rid of by offering discounts or other incentives.
Health Problems - Most pet stores get their puppies from what is known as puppy mills. Puppy mills have no concern about the future soundness of the puppies they sell. Their first (and sometimes only) priority is to churn out as many puppies as cheaply and quickly as possible in order to maximize their profits. Most don't bother to make sure they use bitches and studs who are healthy and won't pass on any genetic problems to the puppies. The bitches are generally locked up in cages or pens and lack proper exercise and veterinary care to ensure healthy pregnancies. In-breeding is also a common practice which leads to a much higher chance for genetic and other health problems in the puppies. Many of these health problems won't become apparent until the puppies are much older and already sold to families. In addition, the puppies are more likely to pick up contagious diseases from each other when they are cooped up in tight quarters, especially since being shipped from puppy mills will have stressed them and lowered their immunity.
Behavioral Problems - Any experienced dog trainer or animal behaviorist can tell you that early socialization for puppies is critical to their development. The problem with puppy mill puppies lacking proper early socialization is two-fold. First of all, when these puppies are taken away from their littermates and their mothers at too young of an age and made to live inside a small cage in a pet store, they miss out on the extremely important skills for relating to other dogs, skills such as how to read other dogs' body language and how to greet or play with other dogs properly. You may be thinking, "So what's the big deal with that? I plan on having only one dog anyway." Well, guess what? Every time you bring that dog to the vet, to a park, to a kennel when you travel, or even just out for a walk, it will see other dogs and it will become a huge problem for you when you can't allow it near other dogs. Secondly, these puppies were most likely not socialized with people much either during their first few weeks of life, and may also need more work in that regard and will be harder to train.
House Training Difficulties - Another common problem with pet store puppies is that they are much harder to housebreak than puppies that come from reputable breeders. When you housebreak a puppy, most commonly you would use a crate and rely on the puppy's natural instinct to keep its den area clean and to go potty outside instead. However, a puppy that spends 24 hours a day in a cage in the pet store has no choice but to soil right inside its cage. After a few weeks of that, the puppy learns to ignore its instinct and will soil in its den/crate whenever it likes, making it much harder for you to house train once you bring it home.

There is a reason why nearly all veterinarians will strongly recommend AGAINST buying puppies from pet stores. They work with these dogs every day and see the long-term problems they have. Of course there will be exceptions and you might personally know someone with a dog that came from a pet store and doesn't have any of the above mentioned problems. What we are talking about is the much, much higher chance for problems. You might not know this, but reputable breeders do not profit from breeding dogs - they lose money instead. They breed dogs for their love of the breed and their desire to help preserve or better the breed. Every single breed has health problems you need to test for in order to be sure the dogs you choose to breed have the best genes to pass on to their puppies. All those tests cost money, not to mention proper nutrition and veterinary care for the pregnant bitches and their puppies. If you think about it, why is it that pet stores can sell puppies at a profit, pay for all their overhead costs, then pass on a small piece of the pie to the puppy mills, and yet the puppy mills are still able to make a profit from what small amount of money's left for them? It is simply not possible to cut corners every which way and still produce quality puppies. If you look at the human-counterpart of this, you will see that all governments and medical insurance companies will happily cover the expenses of prenatal care and pediatric care in order to prevent much more costly long-term medical problems in the babies. If you are still not convinced, please take a few minutes to read Sammy's Story.

So what will happen to all those puppies if everyone's told not to buy them from pet stores? Well, that's a fair question. But unfortunately, as long as people keep buying puppies from pet stores, those puppy mills will keep producing more puppies. That puppy you buy from the pet store out of pity is only going to be replaced by another one who will suffer from the same health and behavioral problems. If you really want to save a life, the better option would be for you to adopt a puppy or dog from a rescue group or animal shelter instead.

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Page Last Updated: October 4, 2021

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