Written by PETA
Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez may have made beliebers out of nearly 200 homeless dogs and cats. When the stars visited the animals at a Winnipeg animal shelter, Gomez found somebody to love (besides the Biebs), a husky mix she named Baylor. Of course, since Justin advocates for adoption and Selena has five other rescued dogs, the couple chose a baby, baby, baby from a shelter instead of a pet store.
Will Justin be adopting a new friend for himself and his dog, Sam? Never say never (except to buying from a breeder).
Written by Michelle Sherrow
If you enjoy watching cheetahs sprint or ospreys dive, you might not be a big fan of sloths—one of the slowest and sleepiest animals on the planet. But a closer look at these Central and South American rainforest relatives of anteaters and armadillos reveals a fascinating animal unlike any other.
© Mark M. Gaskill
Sloths—who can be two-toed and three-toed—spend the vast majority of their time in trees, often hanging upside down from branches, thanks to their powerful front legs. Sloths sleep up to 20 hours a day and move very little when they are awake. If spotted on the ground by a predator, sloths have virtually no chance of escape but will face their pursuer with their sharp claws and fierce bites. But place that same sloth in the water, and you're practically looking at an Olympic swimmer. In fact, sloths take to the water so well that they'll intentionally plummet from a treetop directly into the river below. Sloths even mate and give birth while hanging from branches, and sloth babies cling to their mother for up to nine months.
One of the sloths rescued from USGE
While sloths are right at home in trees and in the water, one place they don't belong is in captivity. Several sloths seized from the now-defunct exotic-animal dealer U.S. Global Exotics (USGE)—based on evidence from a PETA undercover investigation of the hellish warehouse—were thankfully taken in by a progressive, compassionate facility in Detroit. Help keep sloths—and other animals—safe by never spending a dime at any store that sells animals.
Written by Joe Taksel
Tuesday night, in a vote that met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation, the Irvine, California, City Council made the groundbreaking move to simultaneously ban rodeos, circuses that use exotic animals, and retail sales of cats and dogs, making it the first city in the country to ban all three in one fell swoop.
PETA had notified supporters about the pending Irvine vote and urged them to attend the meeting or contact City Council members, and their input was obviously heard loud and clear. Thanks to Irvine's new laws, elephants will be safe from bullhook beatings, horses and bulls will no longer break their backs after being goaded into bucking, and puppy mills will no longer be paid to churn out litters of sickly, unsocialized puppies.
To help pass similar laws in your community, contact your city council members, or e-mail Info@peta.org. For updates on any proposed animal-related laws in your area, join PETA's Action Team.
Written by Heather Faraid Drennan
Lawmakers in California are taking a big step to protect animals from greedy breeders. Landmark two-part legislation bans the sale of animals in any public venue, which includes attempts by breeders to meet buyers they have contacted over the Internet in a neutral location.
The law will, we hope, hinder puppy-mill operators, who often don't want potential buyers to see the cramped, crude, and filthy conditions in which the animals are kept. Undercover investigations of puppy mills have documented dogs with no protection from the heat or cold and no veterinary care while suffering from medical conditions such as crusty, oozing eyes; raging ear infections; mange; and abscessed feet from being forced to stand on wire cage floors. Investigators have also observed dogs who had gone "kennel crazy," frantically turning in circles in their tiny cages.
The new law also increases the penalties for animal neglect so that they are on par with the penalties for cruelty. And some cities in California are going a step further, such as Glendale, where the City Council banned pet store sales of dogs and cats. Of course, we can all protect animals from abuse in the pet trade by always adopting instead of buying.
No dog guardian wants his or her best canine friend to come down with a debilitating, terminal illness. But when they buy a purebred dog, that’s what many dog guardians can expect.
Researchers at the University of Georgia looked at the causes of death for tens of thousands of dogs over two decades and discovered that certain diseases are more likely to afflict certain breeds. For example, they found that Bernese mountain dogs, bouviers des Flandres, boxers, golden retrievers, and Scottish terriers have extremely high mortality rates caused by cancer, while Chihuahuas, Doberman pinschers, fox terriers, Maltese, and Newfoundlands are plagued with deadly cardiovascular disease. This is in addition to the defects that were already known to afflict specific breeds, such as hip dysplasia in German shepherds, spinal disc disease in dachshunds, and epilepsy in beagles.
So, when people pay breeders and pet stores to churn out purebred puppies, who are often the product of inbreeding, they could be sentencing additional dogs to a lifetime of chronic illness and an early death.
That's not to say that mutts don't get sick, but their more diverse genetic makeup lowers the chances that they will suffer from the inherited ailments that often befall purebred dogs. When you adopt a homeless mutt, you not only save a life but also help lessen the demand for more purebred puppies, who may suffer from chronic, painful, and ultimately lethal illnesses.
According to hilarious spoof news source The Onion, the first signs of spring are flowers blooming, longer days returning, and animal shelters euthanizing the last of the "Christmas puppies."
In a recent article, The Onion "interviews" puppy mill patrons who grew tired of caring for their dogs once they outgrew their puppy cuteness: "'Two years ago we bought Lisa a puppy for Christmas,' says Jason Hutton of San Diego, who quietly abandoned his daughter's Lhasa apso by the side of a road when he grew weary of family arguments over whose turn it was to feed it. 'And there came a point where it just wasn't a puppy anymore, you know?'"
For kids who discover a puppy under the tree alongside Xbox games and Barbie dolls, the novelty often wears off faster than you can say "jingle bells," and the dog is discarded like last year's ZhuZhu pet. The Onion's tongue is firmly planted in its cheek, of course, but it's as correct about this scenario as pet stores are about estimating their holiday profits while they play an endless loop of Burl Ives classics.
People visiting Birmingham, England, to attend the world's largest dog show, Crufts, now have something to think about, thanks to a provocative new PETA U.K. ad at a bus stop in town.
Dog shows like Crufts encourage people to breed and buy purebred dogs even in the face of the companion animal overpopulation crisis. Every time someone buys a dog from a breeder or pet store, a shelter dog loses a chance at a home. Making people realize this might make them squirm, but if it encourages someone to adopt an animal instead of buying, it saves a life.
And shelter mutts aren't the only ones in peril—widespread inbreeding ensures that many purebred dogs are plagued by painful and deadly health problems. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in the U.K. dropped its support of Crufts, calling the breeding of deformed and disabled dogs "morally and ethically unjustifiable." Agreed.
Court proceedings are underway that will decide the fate of dozens of animals who were recently seized from a Chattanooga pet store after an employee, Ashley Knight, went to officials at McKamey Animal Center to allege ongoing abuse and neglect at the store. Knight has testified that store manager Brandy Hallman threw a live hamster into a garbage compactor after the animal fought with a cagemate.
When shelter officials visited the store along with a representative of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, they reportedly seized the animals after apparently discovering that many of them were suffering from disease, heat, and lack of water, leaving them dehydrated and stressed. McKamey director Karen Walsh testified that they found one miserable dog in the store's poorly ventilated isolation area for sick animals standing in a cage that was filled with "voluminous diarrhea."
We'll continue to follow this trial closely, and we hope that you'll join us not only in wishing for justice to be served in this case but also in helping to prevent other animals from enduring such miseries by never, ever shopping at pet stores.
Written by Jeff Mackey
Phew! PETA's "BOYCOTT PETCO" brick* survived the 5.7-magnitude earthquake that shook San Diego's PETCO Park on Monday—and here's a photo snapped by an activist last night to prove it:
Don't get me wrong—PETA loves the stadium's tasty, animal-friendly eats but hates the massive suffering that PETCO causes by buying animals from shady dealers and selling them to anyone who walks in, intentions be damned. Animals like the poor fellow below who are bred for and shipped to PETCO and other pet stores get their world shaken to pieces every single day by being mishandled, abused, or even thrown into the trash to die. They are crammed en masse into crowded, filthy containers at animal distributors such as U.S. Global Exotics and Sun Pet, and they're often denied basic necessities, including food, water, adequate air, and veterinary care.
Let's shake things up for PETCO (the store—not the stadium!) by telling it to stop selling animals immediately or we'll shop elsewhere for our dog beds, cat trees, toys, and treats.
Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
*Line up the first letter of each word to find the brick's hidden message!
In case anyone needed another reason never to spend a cent at Petland or other stores that sell live animals, Animal Planet is airing a special report tonight showing how puppies suffer even before they end up in Petland stores. According to Animal Planet, an investigation of puppy mills that supply animals to Petland uncovered "more than 140 dogs housed in chicken-wire kennels, water bowls encrusted with mold and containing green water, … and one breeder's confession that she kills healthy dogs because of their less-than-stellar looks."
This appalling cruelty is business as usual at the hellholes that supply animals to Petland. At Sun Pet Ltd., a PETA undercover investigator recently found that animals were crammed en masse into tubs and that a worker bashed hamsters against a table in an attempt to kill them, among other horrors. At U.S. Global Exotics, another Petland supplier, PETA's investigator found that hundreds of thousands of animals were cruelly confined for days or weeks in pillowcases, shipping boxes, or soda bottles and that sick and injured animals were left in freezers to slowly die.
The only reason why animals continue to suffer for Petland and other stores is that people continue to buy them, so let's all get our friends and families to watch this important exposé with us on Animal Planet tonight at 10 p.m. EDT/PDT!
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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