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Pet shop - Rescue cycle?

I was thinking this today and it's quite sad really :cry: I hope I'm wrong and that it's not like this but thought I would share my thoughts anyway.

When us pro-rescue people turn people away from buying pets from pet shops then bad people will get these animals, and 50% maybe even more will end up in rescue centers anyway. :( But if we let the good, caring people buy animals from pet shops then there would be less buns in rescues because the pet shop buns would have good homes :) So by turning them away, it's like a big cycle and we are kind of adding more buns to the rescue waiting lists.. :(

Just so you know, I do not support buying animals from pet shops and would only rescue or take on a bun that was desperate now. This was just something I was thinking about today. :wave:
 
If we bought from pet shops it would just double their sales of rabbits and therefore increase their profits and the same amount of overbreeding would still carry on. There will always be bad owners unfortunately.
 
That made my brain rattle! :lol:

But rescues usually do homechecks and although there's no guarantees with these, it certainly shows that the rescuer cares and has thought carefully about their decision to rescue (and own) a bun. :)
 
I agree with you and don't agree with you because when new rabbit owners buy rabbits from petshops and can't look after them properly they rehome them in rescues anyway. Its not allways the bad people who rehome them it could be good people as well not being able to take care of them.
 
although I completely favour a total ban on sales of pet shop rabbits (I was involved in the initial set up of MMC in the UK) I do sometimes wonder if when someone posts on RU saying they have 'absolutely fallen in love with' a pet shop bun, and everyone says don't buy it - go to rescue instead . . whether maybe we are just condeming that pet shop rabbit to a crappy neglectful home for 6 months before its dumped in rescue.

Of course if we all got pet shop rabbits then as people say the sales would double, (or more) and rescues would be overwhelmingly full of unwanted rabbits, but just very occasionally if someone posts saying they have really fallen for a pet shop rabbit then I think 'why not - its just saving it from 6 month of hell first'.

Maybe I'm just very pessimistic about the people who would normally nip into a pet shop and pick up a bun . . .

(prepares to leave RU rapidly)
 
But even if you accept that the 'bad' owners will always be 'bad' and those buns may well end up in rescue at some point anyway, if all the 'good' owners also got a pet shop bun, that would be thousands more rabbits spending their life being breeding machines so that we could have those babies.

We've all seen the photos of the conditions that the 68 rabbits rescued from Hampshire were in, and the 80+ in Horsford. It's not just the fate of the babies, what about the mums and dads that have to live their entire lives in those awful conditions, being used as constant breeding machines? Even if you disregard the 'pet shop to rescue cycle' it is still feeding the trade and the more people who buy, the more animals will be kept in those conditions to supply it :(
 
It's something I've thought about before and I also agree with you. Say for example if someone fails a home check fro ma rescue they could just go and buy a rabbit. :?

You can't stop the bad people from buying (wish we could!) but we can pick up the pieces. And again I don't think there is anything wrong in buying as a one off. Every rabbit deserves a good home.
 
It's something I've thought about before and I also agree with you. Say for example if someone fails a home check fro ma rescue they could just go and buy a rabbit. :?

You can't stop the bad people from buying (wish we could!) but we can pick up the pieces. And again I don't think there is anything wrong in buying as a one off. Every rabbit deserves a good home.

If soemone fails a homecheck, at least they've been given an idea in what is involved in owning a rabbit so the seeds of though have been planted????

However, even buying one rabbit from a pet shop is contributing to the chain of breeder/petshop cycle :roll:
 
Say for example if someone fails a home check fro ma rescue they could just go and buy a rabbit. :?

True, but if you follow the same logic through, anyone who rings a rescue and says "hello can I have one of your rabbits, I'm looking to make a delicious dinner from it", "hello can I have some of your rabbits for breeding" or "hello, can I have a rabbit to keep in a hamster cage as a pet for my daughter" should be allowed to have them, because they're going to get them from somewhere else anyway. And we all know that wouldn't be sensible...sadly rescues can't take responsibility for every animal in the world but they can take responsibility for the ones that have come into their care.
 
It's something I've thought about before and I also agree with you. Say for example if someone fails a home check fro ma rescue they could just go and buy a rabbit. :?

You can't stop the bad people from buying (wish we could!) but we can pick up the pieces. And again I don't think there is anything wrong in buying as a one off. Every rabbit deserves a good home.

I agree :) I got Jasper from the pet shop but at the time, I got him because I fell for him, I know, I know, impulse buy but I don't regret it because I love him loads. :love: He was an older rabbit that no one wanted :cry: And I was lucky to find out who his breeder was and thankfully they weren't awful but have stopped breeding now anyway. :) When I got him, I wasn't even intending to get another bunny so it wasn't a case of "I wont get him, I will rescue instead" because he was my bunny who I just couldn't leave at the shop. :(

Would only rescue now though!! :D
 
If soemone fails a homecheck, at least they've been given an idea in what is involved in owning a rabbit so the seeds of though have been planted????

However, even buying one rabbit from a pet shop is contributing to the chain of breeder/petshop cycle :roll:

Yes I do agree. But sometimes you fall in love with a pet shop animal and I think they all deserve a loving home. It does contribute to the cycle. You take one animal to have a happy life and that animal is just replaced. :?

But you can think about it this way, someone would have bought that animal instead of you or when it was too old it would have been replaced by a younger one anyway. And just because it's in a pet shop doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a good home.

I think rescuing is best but buying shouldn't be condemned.

My chinnie Cheech is a pet shop buy and I dread to think what would have happened to her if we hadn't bought her. The advice we were given by someone I thought had a lot of knowledge was awful. She would not be healthy if I hadn't have done research and joined a chinchilla forum. Alone, wrong food, wrong cage, everything.
 
What it boils down to for me is that pet shops buy their livestock from awful farms where the animals are treated terribly with little or no thought going into what animals are bred with what others and what genetic problems may result in the young.

By buying an animal from a pet shop while aware of this you are pretty much saying that you don't have a problem with this.

I don't think it's OK though which is why not only will I not buy an animal from a pet shop I won't buy anything from a pet shop stocking live animals. There are plenty of rescues and plenty of shops and garden centres with morals that I'm much happier giving my money to.
 
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Yes I do agree. But sometimes you fall in love with a pet shop animal and I think they all deserve a loving home. It does contribute to the cycle. You take one animal to have a happy life and that animal is just replaced. :?

But you can think about it this way, someone would have bought that animal instead of you or when it was too old it would have been replaced by a younger one anyway. And just because it's in a pet shop doesn't mean it doesn't deserve a good home.

I think rescuing is best but buying shouldn't be condemned.

My chinnie Cheech is a pet shop buy and I dread to think what would have happened to her if we hadn't bought her. The advice we were given by someone I thought had a lot of knowledge was awful. She would not be healthy if I hadn't have done research and joined a chinchilla forum. Alone, wrong food, wrong cage, everything.

But that is just feeding the supply / demand chain. Ok - it isnt nice for that current pet shop bunny but the shop will buy less, breeders wont breed so much and the situation would let up a little. But if people keep buying 'just one' - then they are providing the demand element.
 
But that is just feeding the supply / demand chain. Ok - it isnt nice for that current pet shop bunny but the shop will buy less, breeders wont breed so much and the situation would let up a little. But if people keep buying 'just one' - then they are providing the demand element.

That's not what I'm saying. Sorry I'm ill so it's quite hard for me to make sense.
If no one buys the rabbit it may go back to the breeder and they'll get another baby. If for example in pets at home no one buys the rabbit it goes into the adoption centre and they buy another one. The breeder still gets money. But I do agree, if we don't buy then they sell less rabbits and there is less demand for breeders to breed rabbits and hopefully, eventually they'll go out of business.

But do you know how many people know about rabbit rescues? Not many. How many people would think to get a rabbit from a rescue if they wanted one. Not many. The mindset of the general public needs to change and slowly is with many charities helping. But for now if 'average Jo(e)' wants a rabbit they're most likely not to think of a rescue first. :(

We are helping by rescuing and I would always want to rescue first, but at the same time if I fell in love with a pet shop animal I would still buy it.
 
That's not what I'm saying. Sorry I'm ill so it's quite hard for me to make sense.
If no one buys the rabbit it may go back to the breeder and they'll get another baby. If for example in pets at home no one buys the rabbit it goes into the adoption centre and they buy another one. The breeder still gets money. But I do agree, if we don't buy then they sell less rabbits and there is less demand for breeders to breed rabbits and hopefully, eventually they'll go out of business.

But do you know how many people know about rabbit rescues? Not many. How many people would think to get a rabbit from a rescue if they wanted one. Not many. The mindset of the general public needs to change and slowly is with many charities helping. But for now if 'average Jo(e)' wants a rabbit they're most likely not to think of a rescue first. :(

We are helping by rescuing and I would always want to rescue first, but at the same time if I fell in love with a pet shop animal I would still buy it.

I totally admit that i was unaware of rescues before joining here - and Lucky is my 3rd rabbit. :oops: I absolutely agree that the mindset of the general public needs to change and i am fully aware of the 'disposable' society that we seem to live in. I am ever hopeful that campaigns like MMC will help this situation. And also but bringing the plight of rescues to the general public by things like twitter and facebook campaigns. We have so much technology at our fingertips and we need to get the message out there. It is soo much more possible nowadays than it ever has been before. :)
 
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