Featured Pet: Bruno: Looking for a new home now!
Animal shelters in the Niagara Region should be the first and only place to look when considering adding a furry addition to your family.
Many people have the misconception that shelters only have adult pets or that pets from shelters are dirty or have something wrong with them. This simply isn’t the case. Many shelters have kittens, puppies with a wide range of “perfectly loveable” pure and mixed bred pets that are in their homeless position at no fault of their own.
You’ll save lives (plural)
Sadly, thousands of cats and dogs are euthanized each year in Canada simply because too many people turn in unwanted pets and too few people adopt from shelters. There simply isn’t enough space, resources and/or budgets available to shelters enabling them to accept and house all admissions, placing excessive pressure on staff members to make difficult decisions involing euthanasia. The amount of euthanized pets in the Niagara Region and across Canada could drastically be reduced if more people adopted pets from shelters, opposed to buying them from pet stores and breeders.
By adopting from your local animal shelter, an animal control agency or a breed rescue group, you’ll actually be helping save the lives of two pets — the animal you adopt in addition to a homeless pet that can now be rescued due to the space you’ll help free up.
You’ll get a healthy pet
Most shelters in Canada thoroughly examine and vaccinate all animals the moment they enter the facility. Often they will also spay or neuter them before placing them up for adoption. This treatment insures that most pets available from shelters are healthy and happy, just waiting for someone to give them a chance while taking them home.
Aside from medical care, more and more shelters are now screening animals based on temperament and specific behavior types, enabling appropriate pairing with potential adoptors while placing the pet into its most suitable environment.
You’ll save money
Because animals from most shelters in the region are already vaccinated, de-wormed, spayed or neutered and often bathed while being treated for fleas, the adoption fee is a real bargain when compared to buying a pet from pet stores or breeders. In this sense, adopting a pet from a shelter can even be less expensive in the long run when compared to getting a pet for free.
You’ll feel good
Not only do animals give you unconditional love, but have proven to offer psychological, emotional, and physical benefits.
Pets have a way of putting a smile on your face with an extra bounce in your step.
Caring for a rescued pet provides a sense of fulfillment and purpose while alleviating potential feelings of loneliness and isolation in all age groups – it’s a fact.
You’ll be putting an end to puppy mills
Factory style, dog-breeding facilities known as Puppy mills place profit above the health and well being of dogs.
Puppy mills house dogs in shockingly poor conditions without proper medical care, while the parents of the puppies are kept in cramped cages to be bred over and over again, with little or no human interaction and with little hope of ever having a life outside of a cage. And after the adult dogs used for breeding no longer prove to be profitable, they are discarded — either killed or abandoned.
Simply put, the conditions are inhumane, however not necessarily illegal.
Unfortunately puppy mills will continue to operate until people stop buying puppies that are sourced on the internet and/or from pet stores.
You’ll stop pet overpopulating leading to more euthanasia
The back yard breeder is the single greatest cause of pet overpopulation. Back yard breeders usually do not have bad intentions, but the results of their actions are devastating.The majority of homeless or abandoned dogs come from this category and are often destroyed. Most are sold locally through newspaper ads or the internet. Most back yard breeders simply do not have the knowledge or budget to properly raise a healthy, socialized litter, or to help the new owner with any problems that may arise.
By not purchasing pets from backyard breeders, the demand for backyard breeders will lesson, reducing overpopulating that leads to more euthanasia.
For more information on adopting a pet, PLEASE visit your local Humane Society.
Source: Lincoln County Humane Societyhttp://www.lchs.ca/
