The sale of puppies and kittens in Burnaby pet stores could be a thing of the past if a Maple Ridge woman gets her wish.
At Monday’s city council meeting, Jordyn Croft presented the results of a year-long project aimed at stopping Pet Habitat from selling kittens and puppies. Over the past few months, Croft has been collecting signatures for a petition that calls on the City of Burnaby to ban the sale of puppies and kittens in pet stores. She now has 460 signatures, in addition to the 270 she collected last fall, when she first approached the city about the Metrotown pet shop.
“(The puppies) have no fresh air, they don’t have space for exercise, they’re lacking (human) contact and most of that is just people tapping on the glass they’re in,” Croft told councillors and staff.
Coun. Sav Dhaliwal was the first to agree with Croft that the city needs to step in on this issue. In an interview Tuesday morning, he told the NOW,he’d tried to have the sale of puppies and kittens banned during the last review of the animal control bylaw about three years ago, but at the time, there wasn’t an appetite for it.
Attitudes appear to have changed since then.
On Monday, several councillors and the mayor echoed Dhaliwal and Croft’s call to put a stop to this practice pending a review of the bylaw.
“I think there’s good reason for us to ask for or seek a review sometime soon,” Dhaliwal said. “It seemed like a number of councillors who did speak on it were also thinking that perhaps a ban is in order because it doesn’t seem to be improved.” During the review in 2013, Dhaliwal said the prevailing thought at the time was to give pet store owners a chance to address complaints of neglect and poor care.
It was left up to the B.C. SPCA, then, to check in on the pet stores on a regular basis to ensure the city’s pet store regulations, which were added as amendments to the current bylaw three years ago, were being followed.
If another review were to be conducted, however, it opens the entire bylaw up for review, including the “vicious dog” classification.
Instead, proposing an amendment might be the best course of action, Dhaliwal said, but even an amendment would take time.
There would have to be a public hearing on the matter and possibly several drafts before something is enacted.
In January, an SPCA inspection of Pet Habitat resulted in one violation ticket for failing to provide veterinary care to one of the animals. The $500 fine was promptly paid by the owner, according to a staff report.
However, in her presentation, Croft said she observed other alleged infractions at the store as recently as last month.
And it is possible breaches are going unreported because inspections are often conducted on a complaint basis or whenever the SPCA has time to drop by the store, Dhaliwal said.
It’s not as regular a system as he would like to see, Dhaliwal added.
He said it’s worrisome to think that, while the city is reviewing the bylaw, animals could be suffering.
He said he plans to speak with staff about making the SPCA inspections more regular until the review process is complete.
“It’s just not practical to provide the care and the space and the proper amount of exercise that’s needed for the pets or animals. It’s just not practical in a store, in a big mall,” Dhaliwal said.
Ernest Ang, owner of Pet Habitat, said without pet stores, people would be forced to buy puppies from shady places often found online.
Until breeders in British Columbia are held to the same standards as breeders in the United States, Ang said he will continue to bring in puppies from south of the border.
B.C. is in the process of bringing in legislation to license cat and dog breeders. The new law is anticipated to take effect in 2017.
Ang said the puppies he sells have the necessary papers from their American breeders. They are all vaccinated prior to being sold and are implanted with microchips.
If a review of the animal control bylaw was conducted and resulted in a ban on the sale of puppies and kittens, Ang said it’s his customers who would suffer.
