Puppy Mills
The Humane Society, as well as other animal rights organizations and numerous pet-loving individuals, have helped spread the word about how terrible puppy mills are. They encourage you to go to adopt a pet from an animal shelter, instead of supporting the puppy mills by buying a dog from a other retail pet stores.*
I've been to a few pet stores in my day, and I've also visited a few Humane Society locations. In my experience, at retail pet stores, the animals are playing in pens together, there are toys, and everything seems colorful, like a commercial. At Humane Societies, they tend to be separated in cages that line a wall, and they all seem restless, confined, or miserable.
Quick question: when you see the animals in regular pet stores in the mall, and then visit the animals at the Humane Society, which ones seem more like they came from a "mill"?
In the for-profit world, there's something known as a "core competency", which is just a five-dollar way of saying "something we do better than our competitors". I don't think non-profits like the Humane Society view pet shops as their competition, but I think they should. The Humane Society believes they're in the business of holding animals in cages (in a humane fashion) until they can be adopted, and they feel that they shouldn't have to resort to a fancy storefront, or the dog-and-pony show, to accomplish that mission.
There's a certain type of person that buys a puppy at a pet store, and a certain type of person that goes the extra mile and gets one from the Humane Society. By refusing to cater to the former, they seem to be limiting their audience to only the latter. Perhaps they're hoping people will change. It's noble of the Humane Society to think they can turn everyone into the latter kind of person. If that ever happened, you could argue that the world might be a better place, and they'd certainly have an easier time getting animals adopted. But is their mission to change people, or to help animals? Changing people is very hard.
If they want to encourage more people to adopt animals, I think that the kindly retail storefront that's bright and shiny is exactly what they need to make people want to adopt a dog or cat.
[* Update: In my original post, I specifically named "Petco" instead of using the more generic "pet stores". This post is about how keeping your customer's perceptions in mind and nice presentation is good marketing. In my efforts to articulate my thoughts, I made a flippant decision to single out Petco by name. This may have led readers to believe that Petco directly supports puppy mills. I have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Creating the association between Petco and puppy mills, while it was done inadvertently, was unfair to them. If you're making a decision about where to adopt an animal, I encourage you to do what I did not, and carefully research the organizations you choose to support before making any conclusions.]
I've been to a few pet stores in my day, and I've also visited a few Humane Society locations. In my experience, at retail pet stores, the animals are playing in pens together, there are toys, and everything seems colorful, like a commercial. At Humane Societies, they tend to be separated in cages that line a wall, and they all seem restless, confined, or miserable.
Quick question: when you see the animals in regular pet stores in the mall, and then visit the animals at the Humane Society, which ones seem more like they came from a "mill"?
In the for-profit world, there's something known as a "core competency", which is just a five-dollar way of saying "something we do better than our competitors". I don't think non-profits like the Humane Society view pet shops as their competition, but I think they should. The Humane Society believes they're in the business of holding animals in cages (in a humane fashion) until they can be adopted, and they feel that they shouldn't have to resort to a fancy storefront, or the dog-and-pony show, to accomplish that mission.
There's a certain type of person that buys a puppy at a pet store, and a certain type of person that goes the extra mile and gets one from the Humane Society. By refusing to cater to the former, they seem to be limiting their audience to only the latter. Perhaps they're hoping people will change. It's noble of the Humane Society to think they can turn everyone into the latter kind of person. If that ever happened, you could argue that the world might be a better place, and they'd certainly have an easier time getting animals adopted. But is their mission to change people, or to help animals? Changing people is very hard.
If they want to encourage more people to adopt animals, I think that the kindly retail storefront that's bright and shiny is exactly what they need to make people want to adopt a dog or cat.
[* Update: In my original post, I specifically named "Petco" instead of using the more generic "pet stores". This post is about how keeping your customer's perceptions in mind and nice presentation is good marketing. In my efforts to articulate my thoughts, I made a flippant decision to single out Petco by name. This may have led readers to believe that Petco directly supports puppy mills. I have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Creating the association between Petco and puppy mills, while it was done inadvertently, was unfair to them. If you're making a decision about where to adopt an animal, I encourage you to do what I did not, and carefully research the organizations you choose to support before making any conclusions.]