Animal Rights Groups Tarnish the Pet Expo

Every year, the California Federation of Dog Clubs operates a booth at the Pet Expo in Orange County, CA. Information is provided about how to responsibly care for your dog, as well as information about the threats to ownership from the animal rights groups and the current legal challenges in our state. I helped staff the booth all day yesterday.

Now if you have never attended one of these Expos, let me describe the events for you. There are booths for individual breeds that are manned by breed clubs. There are rescue and adoption booths. There are many vendors and demonstrations as well, as the Expo rather resembles a county fair.

Demonstations are held with splash dogs and jump dogs and service dogs. There are petting zoos and pens filled with alpacas. There are entire buildings dedicated to small animals such as cats, birds, hamsters, rabbits, rats, reptiles, fish, etc. All in all, it's great fun; there's so much you'll want to see, particularly when you are an animal lover like I am!

We noticed that nearby to our booth was a booth advertising the California Spay-Neuter license plates. You may recall that the spay-neuter license plates are sponsored by "Social Compasssion", the group founded by longtime PETA employee Jane Garrison and her friends. The brochure about the license plate campaign claims:

Spay and Neuter saves lives!......every year, hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats are euthanized in California's shelters simply because there are not enough homes. The simplest and most responsible act that a pet owner can take to alleviate this crisis is to spay or neuter their pets.

Really? There are over five times more new homes opening up for dogs and cats every year in the US than there are pets killed in shelters. There IS no crisis.

And, studies to date show that spay-neuter SHORTENS lives, not saves them. All that bombastic rhetoric, when the truth is that spay/neuter actually CAUSES some very nasty health problems.

And, just as a technical point of information; it ain't "euthanasia" when they kill adoptable animals. It's just plain killing.


The "California Pet Lovers License Plate" campaign, spreading all those lies about why animals are KILLED in shelters. Maybe the reason for all that shelter killing just MIGHT be that the shelters are paid by how many they kill? Just a thought. When you get paid by a bounty system, there tends to be a lot of victims. Or maybe it could be that animals are killed because limit laws prevent people from adopting? Or could it be that areas that recently enacted mandatory spay-neuter laws find that suddenly their intakes are UP, not down?

Odd that in the midst of such a "crisis", "Save a Mexican Mutt", "Compassion Without Borders", and many other groups are actually IMPORTING dogs into California from other countries.

It ain't rocket science, folks. Shelters kill animals. Punitive programs and oppressive laws kill animals. And guess what, the animals who are already spayed/ neutered are killed too, right along with the rest.

I had flyers printed up and ready to go to inform the public about the facts behind the spay-neuter license plate program, but we were told by the event manager that we could not pass out anything that maligned another group who paid for a booth at the Pet Expo.

Yes, there's a dark cloud looming over the Pet Expo, and it seems to hover lower and larger each year. More and more, we are finding some very radical animal groups in attendance. Last year, right across from our breed booth, we had a booth set up by an animal rights pet rescue group. They had merchandise there emblazoned with anti-breeder slogans such as "Don't Breed, Don't Buy, ADOPT".

Here is a sign at a booth that I photographed yesterday.

There were plenty of rescuers with anti-breeder T-shirts as well. "Don't buy"? I guess they are giving the adoptables away for free? No money will change hands? They explain their fees as  "Oh, that's not even enough to cover our veterinary expenses" Hey, guess what, that is exactly the same situation that breeders are in. Most all operate operate at a loss.


No, we are not allowed to spread the truth about the California Spay Neuter License Plate fund; yet, for some unknown reason, these radical animal rights groups are never told to tone down their anti-breeder rhetoric.  

Our group also had to be subjected to a booth nearby for a group called "Arm the Animals". This group is anti-hunting, and just anti-HUMAN in general. They were selling T-shirts featuring screenprints of armed deer, gorillas, dolphins, elephants, even cats and dogs! The implications of these images of animals armed and fighting man are chilling. It really is not at all cute, chic or funny.

Still ANOTHER radical group across the aisle from us was the Irvine Animal Care Center.....the very group that is currently pushing in Irvine for mandatory spay-neuter of all pets by the age of six months. They also want to ban circuses, rodeos, and petting zoos. They wish to outlaw the sales of dogs and cats in pet stores. A nutty group like this has a spot at a pet expo, which features a petting zoo and pony rides? Guess the IACC's disdain for petting zoos didn't override their desire for $$$$ sales of pet supplies and donations to their rescue group. The IACC, an anti-pet store group, had a booth right next to PetStore.com! How's that for irony?

All that push for oppressive pet legislation, and yet the Irvine shelter admits it never has to kill for space.

My sister went to the Pet Expo for the express purpose of buying grooming equiment for her Poodle. Nope, no booths selling grooming equipment. Not a scissor, clipper or poodle comb in sight.

There was, however, a booth providing FREE grooming services to newly "adopted" rescue pets. Hey, what sort of home check can be done when a pet is adopted at a Pet Expo? 

With all the radical groups in attendance, and the big push for "rescue" and "adoption", it's no wonder the breed booths each year are dwindling. Most of the breed booths now consist only of RESCUE groups for each breed. The value of obtaining a well-bred dog or puppy from a breeder is now a POLICALLLY INCORRECT notion, it seems. What a sad state of affairs for our society.  


How much more radical animal rights rhetoric must we endure at the Pet Expo? And when will the operators of the event realize that animal expos and fairs will cease to operate if these groups have their way.


Wake up and smell the coffee, Pet Expo! Without encouraging participation by those who breed and raise animals, and excluding the radical animal rights groups who wish to end all purposeful animal breeding, the "Pet Expo" will not survive into the future.