2. THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS (ASPCA)
Another place to start is the ASPCA, the first humane society to be established in North America and now one of the largest in the world. Their website has a searchable database of more than 13,000 local SPCAs; humane societies; and animal control organisations; in addition to which there are two adoption searches. One search is for cats and dogs available at the ASPCA adoption centre (based in New York, NY) and the other is a local search (upon entering a zip code). While the website is easy to navigate, the searches are limited to cats and dogs.
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Hi Karen,
I appreciate the comment. Unfortunately, I disagree. Breeders and pet store owners abuse their position within the animal kingdom, forcing non-human animals to breed and produce offspring. This does not happen amongst humans and if it were to happen it would be condemned from pole-to-pole as abusive, exploitative and inhumane. In fact, this is a perfect example of speciesism.
Humans have been led to believe that it is acceptable to excert control over non-humans. The “conscientious breeding” of animals is an oxymoron; it is unacceptable behaviour. Furthermore, this world is overpopulated with companion animals, which makes it irresponsible too.
You may not agree with people who breed animals, but I think it is going a little bit far to say “breeders and pet store owners do not work with animals out of the goodness of their heart; they see them as commodities to be bought and sold, from which they can profit.” I have met MANY dog breeders who love their dogs like family, who are proud of them, who take responsibility for EVERY dog they breed from birth to death no matter what, who generally do not make money off of breeding but do it, even though it costs them, for love of their breed. I think it would do a whole lot more good to focus on the people who we ALL can agree are irresponsible- the large scale breeders who are not worried about their dogs genetics or health, who don’t take responsibility for puppies, who don’t socialize them properly, who don’t screen potential adopters, who are motivated by profit, etc. I think it only hurts us to paint small-scale conscientious breeders devoted to their dogs with the same brush as puppy mills and pet stores. There are legitimate reasons to want a purebred dog and lumping all breeders and pet store owners together only loses us potential allies.