Pet shops dupe customers

Puppies are being sold at a Chungmuro petshop in Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Kim Se-jeong

By Kim Se-jeong

Kim Sung-hee, a civil servant, had the heart-breaking experience of seeing her puppy die just several days after she bought it at a pet shop.

She regretted paying no heed to her friend’s warning about such shops.

“My friend told me I shouldn’t buy a pet from a shop as they get sick quickly and die. I should have listened to her,” Kim said.

Kim’s puppy died of intestinal inflammation.

“A vet said this is a chronic illness, meaning the shop owners must have been aware of it,” Kim said.

She now has another dog adopted from a family friend.

Kim’s story is not an isolated case.

Online communities are full of complaints posted by people who have had bad experiences of buying sick pets from shops. The problem is that it is next to impossible to hold the shops liable.

A woman with an online nickname Dura bought a cat from a shop in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, on Feb. 4.

“On the first day, she was good. But she stopped eating, and threw up blood from the second day,” Dura wrote on a Naver group message board.

The vet said the cat had contracted the virus at the shop or a farm where it was born. The cat died just a week later.

She called the shop only to hear it was “not responsible.”

With a growing number of people having companion animals, the pet shop market is growing every year. It is said more than 10 million people have at least one pet.

A pet shop is one of the most common routes to get a companion animal. The Animal Protection Management System run by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has almost 2,000 registered shops across the country.

None of the shops The Korea Times came in contact with for this article acknowledged complaints from customers.

The problem with the animals’ health seems to start earlier, from a farm where they are born and raised.

The Korea Animal Rights Advocates (KARA), a civic group advocating animal rights, said the living conditions for those animals are horrible.

“Female dogs are treated cruelly. Put in a tiny cage suitable for a chicken, they are forced to reproduce repeatedly,” said Kim Na-ra, an activist working for KARA. Kim said that puppies tend to contract diseases easily, and don’t get treatment until they are sent to auction houses for sale where they are picked up by shop owners.

The activist said almost 5,000 animals are traded at 20 auction houses across the country every week.

“We oppose ‘mass production of pets’ and auction houses,” she said. “We want auction houses, to which companion animals are recklessly thrown out for sale, to close down. We want dignity for these animals.”

Regulations are not always in place, and if so, unsuccessfully enforced.

The Animal Protection Law requires a license for dog farms. Only 65 licenses have been given to dog farms by the ministry, but “the actual number could be between 2,000 and 3,000,” according to the activist. Regulations also specify the conditions under which the animals should be raised.

Customers are the most affected in the process ― they get emotionally hurt, and financially burdened.

The law guarantees customers’ rights for refund for the loss of the animal and for medical spending made within the first 15 days. But, shop owners often cheat customers by getting them to sign an agreement that they will not claim reimbursement.

Animal activists say stricter law enforcement is a must. But at the same time they call for people to change their perception of companion animals.

“Things will get better fundamentally if people consider animals not as an object, and that adopting an animal is a serious decision,” Kim said.