AR-News: (Japan) How much do you want that puppy in the window?

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

By AKIKO KONDO

TAKAMATSU, Kagawa Pref. (Kyodo) Pet store owners know it's hard to walk past 
the wide, unblinking eyes of a golden retriever puppy in a store-front window. 

Customers view pets on display at a store in Kagawa Prefecture. 
Indeed, they count on this ability to tug on your heart strings to boost 
sales. 
But puppies bought on impulse grow up, and Japan is starting to experience 
problems stemming from pets being discarded as if they were a pair of outdated 
earrings. 
Japan's pet shop practices, allied to a lack of responsibility on the part of 
owners, are largely responsible for the high number of pets that either die 
due to improper care or else are abandoned, according to a local government 
official and a pet dealer in Kagawa Prefecture. 
Health centers have reported an increase in pets brought in to be euthanized. 
Pet euthanasia is considered a necessary evil to prevent the spread of 
disease and property damage caused by strays. 
According to Environment Ministry statistics, about 124,000 dogs and 273,000 
cats were put to sleep at health centers nationwide in fiscal 2001. Of that 
total, about 4,600 dogs and 2,300 cats -- the seventh-highest -- were euthanized 
and disposed of in Kagawa Prefecture. 
"That's because of the large amount of undeveloped land in the area, so 
abandoned animals are likely to survive and multiply," a Kagawa public sanitation 
official said.



full story:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040313b8.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040312/9a39f5e3/attachment.html