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It’s the latest victory in Best Friends’ mission to bring an end to the cruel puppy mill trade. Thanks to our Puppy-Store-Free L.A. campaign, another pet store will be closing its doors.
The Beverly Center, an upscale shopping mall in Beverly Hills, California, has announced it will terminate Pet Love’s lease sometime in the next few months. Best Friends made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday.
“Our work here in Los Angeles sends the strongest possible message everywhere that pet shops are supplied by puppy millers,” said Paul Berry, Best Friends chief executive officer. “If a pet store can be closed down in the iconic Beverly Center, it can happen anywhere in the country – New York, Chicago, Boston and other large metro areas.”
Pet Love isn’t just your average little neighborhood pet shop. It has been a fixture at the high-end, celebrity-filled mall for more than 15 years. Pet Love is to pet stores what FAO Schwarz is to toy stores, says Julie Castle, director of Best Friends’ Community Programs and Services.
“It’s the mother of all pet stores in terms of strength and visibility,” Castle says. “It seemed a faraway prospect that this goliath would go down. We were surprised it happened so quickly and with such public backing.”
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Paul Berry, Best Friends CEO and Elizabeth Oreck, Best Friends’ LA programs manager |
Castle says this latest development is one of the biggest accomplishments in the history of Best Friends outreach. “It’s one of the biggest days for Best Friends ever,” Castle says.
Since last July, Best Friends staffers and members have been at the Beverly Center educating potential customers about where those cute puppies in the Pet Love store really come from.
Mall shoppers saw documented proof from a Best Friends investigation that Pet Love acquires its puppies from puppy mills across the country. They learned that many of these puppies suffer from physical ailments caused by the horrible conditions in puppy mills and being taken from their mothers too soon. They saw a video of a KCBS Los Angeles undercover report that shows a Pet Love worker, who didn’t sanitize the syringe or his hands, pumping puppies full of antibiotics that hadn’t been prescribed.
“It helps people understand the connection between puppies they see in the pet stores and the cruel and inhumane conditions under which they are bred in these puppy mills,” says Elizabeth Oreck, Best Friends’ Los Angeles programs manager.
People listened – and hundreds of Beverly Center patrons and employees signed a petition expressing their concerns about Pet Love’s practice of selling sick dogs. Many of them shared their own heartbreaking stories of having bought a Pet Love dog – costing as much as $3,000 – and then losing them to illness.
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Elizabeth Oreck, Best Friends’ LA programs manager |
Puppy mills flood the market with four million animals each year, contributing significantly to crowded shelters, where some five million animals a year are euthanized.
Oreck says people in the market for a purebred dog should look to their local shelter or breed rescue group. It’s estimated that one in four shelter dogs is a purebred. “You’re saving a life rather than supporting a cruel and inhumane industry that’s motivated by financial gain,” she says.
Best Friends didn’t set out to close Pet Love down, but rather to get the shop’s owners to change their business model and stop selling animals from puppy mills and other irresponsible breeders. The owners refused and even threatened litigation, Oreck says.
Now, the residents of Los Angeles County have spoken and the Beverly Center has heard them. “The mall is doing the right thing and they need to be commended for that,” Oreck says.
Pet Love is just one of several pet stores to close its doors since Best Friends launched its Puppy-Store-Free L.A. campaign last summer. We will continue to hold peaceful protests outside of stores that sell puppy mill dogs and to educate potential customers about where these dogs come from. We’ll also continue to work with government officials to change ordinances in Los Angeles County and put puppy mills out of business.
Another important part of the Los Angeles effort is Pup-My-Ride, which rescues small purebred dogs from the Los Angeles County shelter system and transports them to cities that don’t have enough of these dogs to meet public demand. Thanks to the program, hundreds of dogs have found their way out of shelters and into loving homes.
Written by Sandy Miller
Photos by Bob Long of Long Photo
For more about puppy mills, see The Truth About the Pet Trade.
Read more about Best Friends’ Puppy-Store-Free L.A. campaign.
Donate to the Best Friends campaign to stop puppy mills and the cruel commercial pet breeding industry.
