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Pet-shop bans: West End girls, others could be barred from buying guinea pigs at pet stores
By adamg on Wed, 12/06/2023 - 2:33pm
In a region now overflowing with guinea pigs, the Boston City Council voted today added the fuzzy animated potatoes to the list of animals that can't be sold in city pet shops.
The measure, proposed by the MSPCA and the Animal Rescue League, would go into effect 90 days after Mayor Wu signs the council order.
City Councilor Liz Breadon, who proposed adding guinea pigs to dogs, cats and rabbits as animals that local pet shops can't sell, said the two animal-care groups are increasingly finding themselves overrun with guinea pigs, a smaller relative of the capybara, raised in the equivalent of puppy mills.
Despite their relative diminutive size, the animals can require expensive medical care and are not as readily adopted as dogs and cats - they tend to stay in local shelters twice as long as dogs and cats - she said.
"We're not saying families shouldn't adopt guinea pigs," just that people who want them should go to a local shelter, rather than a pet store, she said.
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| Attachment | Size |
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 Complete city-council order on guinea pigs | 165.27 KB |
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Comments
That headline
A+++++++++++, Would read again.
agree, that title is a winner!
HAHAHAHA AAAAA++++++
Came for the 80s pop
Came for the 80s pop reference, stayed for "fuzzy animated potatoes" because it's true.
mammals
Walk-in / retail pet stores shouldn't be allowed to sell any mammals, period. Stick to fish.
Honestly the fish issue needs
Honestly the fish issue needs addressing. The amount of sick, uncared for fish on pet store shelves is disgusting. Sealed plastic containers with a couple cups of dirty water. Half the fist you can't tell if they're even still alive - then people buy them and take them home and are faced with a huge uphill battle to get them well or not.
Shelters don't want to get into the business of fish which I get but there has to be some better avenue for purchasing. Serious fish people generally sell online - if it was made illegal for pet stores to sell live fish they could partner with those groups or small sellers or whatever.
birds
What about birds? People get birds because they think they're pretty and it's cute them some of them can talk or respond to you with whistles and chirps. But birds are very sensitive and, like any pet, need specific care. They're very social and intelligent, so putting one in a cage and ignoring it is cruel. They also live for an incredibly long time, some as many as 50-75 years. That's literally a lifetime commitment.
I don't know if shelters get parakeets, love birds, cockatiels, parrots, etc. But potential bird owners need to be more informed of what they're really committing to.
Also reptiles
I considered getting a gecko but decided not to after learning how sensitive they are. Reptiles don't have a wide range of environmental tolerance.
Overflowing would more
Overflowing would more accurately describe the rat population, how about some meaningful city council action on that.
Sigh
That is a completely different topic. So tired of "whataboutism."
There might actually be a
There might actually be a connection, sort of -- do pet stores sell rats sometimes? (Not sure, just guessing.) I have read online some people commenting about their pet rats.
They do, mice too. Rats make
They do, mice too. Rats make pretty good pets: they're smart and affectionate and, counterintuitively, very clean.
They do, although pet store rats are pretty unhappy too.
They pile the rats together without regard for the rat's sex, so you end up with a lot of pregnant females and then even more babies. A lot of those are sold for feeding to snakes, although frankly most snake owners buy frozen mice because it's safer *for the snake*.
I had rats as a kid, from a pet store, and while they were wonderful pets I would 100% recommend going to a rat breeder instead -- the rats there are almost always healthier, longer-lived, treated better, and friendlier (less chance of traumatic associations with humans).
("Fancy rats", as pet rat breeds are called, are technically the same species as the street rats here but are very different in temperament. Sort of like wolves and dogs.)
Rats, mice, wolves, dogs
I used to know someone who bought live baby mice to feed to her snakes (boa constrictors). None of them were in a cage; she let the snakes and the mice roam freely around her apartment. Not sure but I think she bought the mice in a pet store that sold them for that purpose; she said they were called "pinkies". Knowing her, I suspect she enjoyed watching the snakes hunt down and kill the mice.
By the way, wolves and dogs are not considered the same species; wolves are canis lupus (with different varieties or sub-species, like timber wolves and gray wolves, from which dogs are descended). Dogs are classified as canis familiaris, or sometimes as canis lupus familiaris. Of course all taxonomy is controversial and scientists sometimes disagree as to what should constitute a separate "species". In fact, the definition of "species" has changed a few times just in my lifetime; the most sophisticated description (IMHO) is that there's no such thing as a "species" in nature. Living things are a continuum of evolution; the taxonomic boundaries are (somewhat arbitrarily) invented by humans for our own purposes.
BTW, there used to be a lot more pet stores years ago; most of them are gone now. Other than dogs and cats retrieved from shelters, I don't know where most people get other kinds of pet animals, especially the exotic ones.
FTFY
Do you even know whether it's
Do you even know whether it's legal to sell pet rats in Boston? (Honest question, all I could find quickly is that it's legal in Massachusetts as a whole.)
Banning the sale of pet rats probably wouldn't do anything about the feral rat population either, but neither would continuing to allow the sale of guinea pigs.
West End girls!
West End girls!
Can we just ban pet stores?
Can we just ban pet stores?
What’s your objective in this
If you want to ban pet ownership, advocate for that. If you just want to make it more difficult to buy kitty litter or dog shampoo, I’m not sure what that accomplishes other than making life more of a hassle for people who own pets.
"Pet store"
"Pet store" = store that sells pets.
"Pet supply store" = store that sells supplies for pets.
A pet supply store does not have to sell pets, and I'd bet that's not where their profit comes from.
Animated potato was my code
Animated potato was my code name in the marine corps
How many
pet stores are there in Boston? Honest question — I’ve lived in the city for nearly 20 years and I don’t think i have ever seen one.
Good question
There might only be one left, on Harvard Avenue in Allston.
how we love algorithms
All the ads that came up on this story were for pet guinea pig supplies.
Can't wait to see the 311
Can't wait to see the 311 complaints about guinea pigs the size of dogs.
Are there massive guinea pig
Are there massive guinea pig colonies anywhere in Boston where abandoned pets are deposited like the one for rabbits out near Bunker Hill Community College?
Or...
So...why don't we eat them? Are there no Peruvians in Boston anywhere?