With places such as the SPCA and Small Animal Rescue Society, with considerable amounts of animals, why are people still buying? With many logical reasons behind buying instead of adopting, why are people still adopting? Almost every family across the planet has at least one pet, what influences their decision to either buy or adopt? These questions can come with many different answers that can make some people choose to adopt and some people to choose to buy.
Why Are People Buying?
Many families will choose to buy a pet instead of adopting one, one main reason is that they want to train their animal from when it is a child, and you will very rarely find young animals in shelters. Just like having their own baby, they want to create a personality for their animal and adopters find it hard to do that with an older pet. A study by Samuel Nieves from bestofdog.com shows that another reason why people are purchasing pets is because they want to know exactly where their animal is from. The reason being, they might want to breed their animal later. If the dog (for example) isn’t purebred or doesn’t have champion dogs in their pedigree they may not adopt them because if they breed their dog they want to make sure they make a good profit. Some other reasons for not wanting to adopt are:
- The animal could have behavioral problems.
- The animal could be unhealthy.
- Adopters know nothing about the animals past. *
These are logical reasons to want buy a pet instead of adopting and with the overflowing state of shelters and animals from rescue groups, it seems that this is the route people usually take.
Why Are People Adopting?
There are quite a few reasons why people choose to adopt an animal over buying one. One of those reasons is expenses. Buying an animal can be anywhere from $100-$1000 or even more. When adopting a pet it could be as little as $20 depending on the shelter. Another reason why people are adopting stated from bestfriends.org is that when people would buy an animal from a store or from someone who bred the animal, they are on their own. When adopting from a shelter or rescue group, the shelters/rescue groups usually have a backstory of the animal and will help if there are any problems or questions that surface with the pet.
The last reason people usually want to adopt is because they want to save an animal’s life and give them a better home than what it probably had before. Many people will agree that adopting an animal is important and that everyone should adopt at least once, but if this is the case then why are our shelters/rescue groups overflowing with unwanted animals?
Both of these decisions have logical reasoning behind them but also have many unanswered questions. Many families will just adopt, just buy, or do both, it varies. Some people will agree with everything that goes behind adopting and some people may feel more comfortable and agree with everything that goes behind buying a pet. Have you ever thought about adopting or buying? Which one would you choose? The route that you decide to take is up to you.
References:
Thoughts From A Twenty-Something 